national security epiphany: suspend due process and liquidate all tier 1 and 2 threats immediately

texas.gov |  The Texas Department of Public Safety (DPS) has released the updated Texas Gang Threat Assessment, which was developed to provide a broad overview of gang activity in the state of Texas. 

“Gang violence and crime are a chief threat to public safety in Texas, and protecting our communities from these criminals remains a top priority,” said DPS Director Steven McCraw. “This assessment provides detailed information about the gangs operating in our state, which will enhance the ability of law enforcement to combat these dangerous organizations and their associates.” 

The Texas Gang Threat Assessment was developed according to statute, which requires an annual report to be submitted to the governor and Texas Legislature assessing the threat posed by statewide criminal gangs. The report is based on the collaboration between multiple law enforcement and criminal justice agencies across the state and nation, whose contributions were essential in creating this comprehensive overview of gang activity in Texas. 

“Gangs represent one of the top organized-crime threats to public safety,” said Sen. Craig Estes, chair of the Senate Committee on Agriculture, Rural Affairs and Homeland Security. “The Texas Gang Threat Assessment will serve as a critical tool to assist law enforcement agencies in developing and executing strategies to protect Texans, and I applaud the Texas Department of Public Safety for its efforts in combating this critical threat.”

“The most effective tool in fighting any threat is understanding the enemy. This intelligence report amasses information about gang trends and their relationships that is critical to effectively targeting and disrupting these criminal organizations,” said Rep. Joe Pickett, chair of the House Committee on Homeland Security and Public Safety.

This assessment details the state’s systematic approach to evaluating and classifying gangs in order to identify which organizations represent the most substantial threat. The report reveals that current gang membership across the state may exceed 100,000 individuals.

Additional significant findings include:

• Gangs continue to pose a substantial threat to public safety in Texas and are responsible for a disproportionate amount of crime in our communities.
• Many gangs in Texas continue to work with Mexican cartels to smuggle drugs, weapons, people and cash across the border. The relationships between some gangs and cartels have evolved over the past year due in part to volatility and changes in cartel structures and relationships in Mexico.
• Of the incarcerated members of Tier 1 and Tier 2 gangs, more than half are serving a sentence for a violent crime, including robbery (25 percent), homicide (13 percent), and assault/terroristic threat (15 percent).
• Texas-based gangs, gang members and their associates are active in both human smuggling and human trafficking, which often includes sex trafficking and compelling prostitution of adult and minor victims. Gangs will continue to operate in human trafficking due to the potential for large and renewable profits and the assumed low risk of detection by law enforcement.
• Tango Blast remains the state’s most significant gang threat. The Tier 1 gangs in Texas are: Tango Blast and Tango cliques (more than 8,200 members); Texas Syndicate (more than 4,400 members); Texas Mexican Mafia (more than 5,500 members), and Barrio Azteca (more than 2,000 members).

View the full Texas Gang Threat Assessment.

please tell me where I can find the blacks who followed Malcolm X?

NYTimes |  A Duke University professor criticized for an online post comparing blacks and Asians said Monday that it's not racist to discuss what he sees as differences in how the groups have performed in the U.S. over the past few decades.

Political science professor Jerry Hough has been sharply criticized for a response he posted in the online comments section of the New York Times editorial "How Racism Doomed Baltimore," dated May 9. The 80-year-old professor, who is white, has been on an unrelated academic leave for the past school year.

In his online comments, Hough wrote that Asians have been described as "yellow races" and faced discrimination in 1965 at least as bad as blacks experienced. Of Asian-Americans, he wrote: "They didn't feel sorry for themselves, but worked doubly hard."

The posting goes on to say: "I am a professor at Duke University. Every Asian student has a very simple old American first name that symbolizes their desire for integration. Virtually every black has a strange new name that symbolizes their lack of desire for integration."

In an email Monday to The Associated Press, Hough defended his comments but said it's difficult to be subtle in a post on a newspaper's comments section with a limited word count.

"I only regret the sloppiness in saying every Asian and nearly every black," he wrote in the email. "I absolutely do not think it racist to ask why black performance on the average is not as good as Asian on balance, when the Asians started with the prejudices against the 'yellow races' shown in the concentration camps for the Japanese."

Hough described himself as a disciple of Martin Luther King Jr. in the 1950s who supported integration. In his lifetime, he said, he's observed prejudice ranging from the World War II-era internment camps for Japanese-Americans to segregation in the South, and he's dismayed that more progress hasn't been made.

"My purpose is to help achieve the battle of King's battle to overcome and create a melting pot America," he said.

andrea tantaros keeps forgetting why roger ailes has her on the fauxnews couch...,

dailymail |  FoxNews.com reported Monday that on February 25, Ms Chamberlin went on a public Facebook thread and weighed in on a controversial article posted on TheGrio.com condemning Patricia Arquette's Oscar speech, in which she famously said that women deserve to get equal pay for equal work.

The author of the opinion piece, writer and filmmaker Blue Telusma, who is black, argued that African-Americans and members of the LGBTQ community do not owe white women any assistance.

‘I LITERALLY cry and lose sleep over this,’ Ms Chamberlin wrote in reaction to the op-ed, revealing that she had been raped as a child. ‘What this article did was tell me that I'm not aloud [sic] to ask for help… Because I am a WHITE woman… So when I read this article… you do understand what that does to me, right? It kills me…’

In response, a commenter by the name Sai Grundy, who used the same photo as the BU professor on her now-private Twitter account, poked fun at the married mother of two, writing: ‘I literally cry… While we literally die.’

When Mrs Chamberlin replied that she ‘got’ Grundy’s message and assured her that she can now take her ‘claws’ out, the African-American studies professor unleashed a torrent of vitriol in the form of a foul-mouth message partially written in caps.

‘^^THIS IS THE S**T I AM TALKING ABOUT. WHY DO YOU GET TO PLAY THE VICTIM EVERY TIME PEOPLE OF COLOR AND OUR ALLIES WANT TO POINT OUT RACISM. my CLAWS?? Do you see how you just took an issue that WASNT about you, MADE it about you, and NOW want to play the victim when I take the time to explain to you some s**t that is literally $82,000 below my pay grade? And then you promote your #whitegirltears like that’s some badge you get to wear… YOU BENEFIT FROM RACISM. WE’RE EXPLAINING THAT TO YOU and you’re vilifying my act of intellectual altruism by saying i stuck my “claws” into you?’

Chamberlin tried to extricate herself from the tense exchange by writing to Grundy: ‘'I am choosing to "exit" this conversation, You don't know me. I don't know you. It's really as simple as that.' 

But Grundy continued piling on and ended up having the last word in the heated back-and-forth.

'^^YOU DONT HAVE TO KNOW ME. what you SHOULD know is that you don't know more about this issue than margenalized women. And instead of entering this conversation with an iota of humility about that, you have made it a celebration of your false sense of victimization. no [sic] go cry somewhere. snce that's what you do.'

Chamberlin signed off with the words: 'Will do.'

Ms Grundy wrote in a separate comment in the thread: 'am I mocking her tears or am I saying that her tears are meaningless displays of emotions because they don't reflect at ALL an intention to understand the issue from the prospective [sic] of women of color and queer women.'

The entire conversation has since been removed from Facebook, along with Saida Grundy's social media account.

bout time somebody open-sourced the guts of a cell phone for cheap...,

WaPo |  For $9, you will soon be able to buy an insanely cheap computer the size of a credit card that runs Linux and comes with a 1 GHz processor, 512 MB RAM, 4 GB storage, and built-in WiFi and Bluetooth. While that’s enough computing power to surf the Web, play video games, check e-mail and use word processing software, the real potential is what DIY innovators, hackers and inventors will do with this cheap computing platform once they integrate it into other projects.

The world’s first $9 computer — known as C.H.I.P. — won’t be available for shipping until early 2016. For now, it’s still only a Kickstarter project with nearly a month to go – but the promise and potential of a crazy cheap computer is so alluring that the Oakland, Calif. company behind the project – Next Thing Co. – has already raised more than $925,000 from more than 18,000 backers in just a few days, easily blowing past the $50,000 they had hoped to raise via Kickstarter.

C.H.I.P. comes from the same innovation oeuvre as the $35 Raspberry Pi — a credit-card size computer that is cheap, portable, highly programmable and highly connectable. So if Raspberry Pi has managed to attract a worldwide user community at a price point of $35, you can just imagine what the lower-cost, more powerful C.H.I.P. might be able to do once it attracts a critical mass of users.

quantum computing fitna _______________?

WaPo |  There is a race to build quantum computers, and (as far as we know) it isn’t the NSA that is in the lead. Competing are big tech companies such as IBM, Google, and Microsoft; start-ups; defense contractors; and universities. One Canadian start-up says that it has already developed a first version of a quantum computer. A physicist at Delft University of Technology in the Netherlands, Ronald Hanson, told Scientific American that he will be able to make the building blocks of a universal quantum computer in just five years, and a fully-functional demonstration machine in a little more than a decade.

These will change the balance of power in business and cyber-warfare.  They have profound national-security implications, because they are the technology equivalent of a nuclear weapon.

Let me first explain what a quantum computer is and where we are.

In a classical computer, information is represented in bits, binary digits, each of which can be a 0 or 1.  Because they only have only two values, long sequences of 0s and 1s are necessary to form a number or to do a calculation. A quantum bit (called a qbit), however, can hold a value of 0 or 1 or both values at the same time — a superposition denoted as “0+1.”  The power of a quantum computer increases exponentially with the number of qubits. Rather than doing computations sequentially as classical computers do, quantum computers can solve problems by laying out all of the possibilities simultaneously and measuring the results.

Imagine being able to open a combination lock by trying every possible number and sequence at the same time. Though the analogy isn’t perfect — because of the complexities in measuring the results of a quantum calculation — it gives you an idea of what is possible.

There are many complexities in building a quantum computer: challenges in finding the best materials from which to generate entangled photon pairs; new types of logic gates and their fabrication on computer chips; creation and control of qubits; designs for storage mechanisms; and error detection. But breakthroughs are being announced every month. IBM, for example, has just announced that it has found a new way to detect and measure quantum errors and has designed a new qubit circuit that, in sufficient numbers, will form the large chips that quantum computers will need.

Most researchers I have spoken to say that it is a matter of when — not whether — quantum computing will be practical. Some believe that this will be as soon as five years; others say 20 years.  IBM said in April that we’ve entered a golden era of quantum-computing research, and predicted that the company would be the first to develop a practical quantum computer.

first computational genomics, now computational ethology...,

academia |  Abstract: For the past two decades, it has widely been assumed by linguists that there is a single computational operation, Merge, which is unique to language, distinguishing it from other cognitive domains. The intention of this paper is to progress the discussion of language evolution in two ways: (i) survey what the ethological record reveals about the uniqueness of the human computational system, and (ii) explore how syntactic theories account for what ethology may determine to be human-specific. It is shown that the operation Label, not Merge, constitutes the evolutionary novelty which distinguishes human language from non-human computational systems; a proposal lending weight to a Weak Continuity Hypothesis and leading to the formation of what is termed Computational Ethology. Some directions for future ethological research are suggested.

 Keywords: Minimalism; Labeling effects; cognome; animal cognition; formal language theory; language evolution

kwestins for these humans...,

Why are you humans mesmerized by the lurid compelling pictures, the practical, pretend, and photoshopped other-worldliness of the demi-humans in the pantheon of celebrity?

What purpose is served by these larger, more perfect, and more colorful avatars that cycle above your  pedestrian peasant lives?

Is celebrity-worship a sign of the downfall of western civilization, or, more of the same augmented by new, pervasive, and not entirely understood cognitive distributive media?

Do celebrities serve the same purpose in fin d'siecle western culture as the pantheon of gods did in Greek and Roman culture and the saints did in Roman Catholic culture?

know thyself BD....,

hbdchick |  you will never understand human biodiversity without first turning an hbd-eye on yourself.

before i elaborate on that, a small exercise. indulge me.

at the end of this sentence, when i ask you to, i want you to raise your eyes from your monitor (or smartphone or tablet or whatever device you’re using), glance around for a few seconds, and then come back here. okay: go!

back? great.

now, i don’t know exactly what you saw during your brief adventure away, but what i do know is that when you looked around your room or office or the coffee shop or your own private tropical island (d*mn you!), you experienced seeing a smooth, undisturbed, flowing picture of your surroundings — it was a video-like experience (hopefully not a shaky cam-like one! if so, get to a doctor, quick!). that experience is a false one, created by your brain to make life easier for you. what happens, in fact, is that each and every time we move our gaze from one object or scene to another, in the intervening nanoseconds, we are effectively blind. we don’t “see” anything for those split seconds. the reason we don’t experience what would presumably be a very disturbing and confusing one — the lights going off and on all day long! — is because our brains fool us. the brain interpolates the visual data captured via eyeballs, etc., and presents it all to its owner (user?) in a nice, even — but unreal — picture of what that individual “sees.”

cool, huh? yeah.

the reason i bring this up is just to illustrate how our brains are not really to be trusted. fantastic, wonderful, unfathomable organ! — but one that fools us. a lot! it deceives us so that we don’t go around bumping into things all day long (the saccadic masking mentioned above). it deceives us (deceives itself!) so that we can decieve others. it probably fools each of us into believing that we are discrete individuals — that we are or have “selves.” h*ck! it even looks like our consciousness is not a stream but more like rhythmic pulses. all for good evolutionary reasons, of course. but, still, there it is: the brain is a trickster.

once you realize this about the human brain — that it’s an indispensible but untrustworthy organ — all of the cognitive biases and dissonances that we suffer from start to make sense. humans are not rational creatures. we are capable of some amount of logic and rational thought (some more than others), but more often than not, our “reason” serves as an excuse generator for our innate drives, desires, and proclivities.

the next thing you need to know — and you really have to internalize this — is that all of those drives and desires and proclivities are innate. all behavioral traits are heritable to some degree or another, which means that genes are behind them, and which means that there’s not much any of us can do to change our natures. for instance, there prolly aren’t specific genes that will make a person a christian versus a muslim, but there are definitely genes “for” religiosity. which religion a person with “genes for” religious belief follows will obviously depend to a large degree on the culture in which he is immersed, but persons with “genes for” religious belief will tend to be religious or spiritual somehow.

all behavioral traits are heritable. and, so, you cannot change people or peoples — not fundamentally. people are what they are. you are what you are, and so most of your thoughts and conclusions and feelings about life and the world around you are expressions of your innate traits. mine, too. (don’t worry. i’ll get to that.) and let’s be honest: innate traits and a deceiving brain are no foundations for uncovering the truth. we cannot rely on our gut instincts in trying to uncover the facts about reality or to (consciously) understand how the world works. the only way around this problem of our lyin’, cheatin’, no-good brains is to rely on science and its finding. of course, since science is conducted by humans, we run into all those cognitive biases, etc., again. but with enough effort, i think we can eventually discover some truths. either that or space stations will some day start falling out of the sky, and we’ll know we’re doing it wrong.

macrocognition a theory of distributed minds and collective intentionality

ndpr.nd.edu |  The idea that groups have minds was popular in the late-19^th and early-20^th centuries. The group mind was posited as a force that influenced and dominated individual agency and provided an explanation for various types of human behavior. But such explanations were deemed mysterious, and, with the rise of behaviorism and operationalism, the idea fell out of favor. But interest in group mentality has experienced a rebirth over the past few decades. Within philosophy, Margaret Gilbert's work (e.g., 1989, 2004, 2013) has done a great deal to bring attention to the ways in which individuals might form a single unit of intentional agency, and Christian List and Philip Pettit's recent book Group Agency (2011) argues that there are genuine group mental states that cannot be reduced to the mental states of individuals within the group. Outside of philosophy, the study of distributed cognition is a growing area of research in cognitive science, and the hypothesis of group mind is gaining traction in economics, social psychology, organizational theory, and politics. Recent theories of group mentality, however, are thought to be just as mysterious as their 19^th and early-20^th century ancestors. Macrocognition goes a long way to demystifying the idea. It provides the most sustained and detailed defense of group minds available in the literature today.  Macrocognition

offloading cognition onto cognitive technology

arvix |  "Cognizing" (e.g., thinking, understanding, and knowing) is a mental state. Systems without mental states, such as cognitive technology, can sometimes contribute to human cognition, but that does not make them cognizers. Cognizers can offload some of their cognitive functions onto cognitive technology, thereby extending their performance capacity beyond the limits of their own brain power. Language itself is a form of cognitive technology that allows cognizers to offload some of their cognitive functions onto the brains of other cognizers. Language also extends cognizers' individual and joint performance powers, distributing the load through interactive and collaborative cognition. Reading, writing, print, telecommunications and computing further extend cognizers' capacities. And now the web, with its network of cognizers, digital databases and software agents, all accessible anytime, anywhere, has become our 'Cognitive Commons,' in which distributed cognizers and cognitive technology can interoperate globally with a speed, scope and degree of interactivity inconceivable through local individual cognition alone. And as with language, the cognitive tool par excellence, such technological changes are not merely instrumental and quantitative: they can have profound effects on how we think and encode information, on how we communicate with one another, on our mental states, and on our very nature.  Cognition Distributed

faux news and the poor

NYTimes |  This week, during a panel discussion on poverty at Georgetown University, President Obama lambasted the media, and in particular Fox News, for creating false, destructive narratives about the poor that paint them broadly as indolent and pathological.

The president said:

“Over the last 40 years, sadly, I think there’s been an effort to either make folks mad at folks at the top, or to be mad at folks at the bottom. And I think the effort to suggest that the poor are sponges, leeches, don’t want to work, are lazy, are undeserving, got traction.”

He continued:

“And, look, it’s still being propagated. I mean, I have to say that if you watch Fox News on a regular basis, it is a constant menu — they will find folks who make me mad. I don’t know where they find them. [Laughter.] They’re like, I don’t want to work, I just want a free Obama phone — [laughter] — or whatever. And that becomes an entire narrative — right? — that gets worked up. And very rarely do you hear an interview of a waitress — which is much more typical — who’s raising a couple of kids and is doing everything right but still can’t pay the bills.”

MSNBC’s Joe Scarborough took umbrage. After saying that “the arrogance of it all is staggering,” and that he was “a little embarrassed” for the president, Scarborough demanded of his befuddled panel: “What about the specific clip about Fox News calling poor people leeches, sponges and lazy? Have you ever heard that on Fox News?” One panelist responded, “No, I have not.” Then Scarborough opened the question to them all: “Has anybody ever heard that on Fox News?”

Well, yes.

In 2004, Bill O’Reilly, arguably the face of Fox News, said: “You gotta look people in the eye and tell ‘em they’re irresponsible and lazy. And who’s gonna wanna do that? Because that’s what poverty is, ladies and gentlemen. In this country, you can succeed if you get educated and work hard. Period. Period.”

In 2012, O’Reilly listed what he called the “true causes of poverty” including “poor education, addiction, irresponsible behavior and laziness.”

In 2014, during the week that marked the 50th anniversary of L.B.J.’s “War on Poverty,” O’Reilly again said that “true poverty” (as opposed to make-believe poverty?) “is being driven by personal behavior,” which included, according to him, “addictive behavior, laziness, apathy.”

Even though the president didn’t say that Fox News specifically used the words “sponge,” “leeches” and “lazy,” O’Reilly has indeed, repeatedly, called poor people lazy, and the subtext of his remarks is that many poor people are pathologically and undeservedly dependent on the government dole.

Now who should be embarrassed for whom?

needs a payday loan and a tattoo parlor....,

remember back in the good old days when it was just waterheads stealing copper?

accuweather |  With the state of California mired in its fourth year of drought and a mandatory 25 percent reduction in water usage in place, reports of water theft have become common.

In April, The Associated Press reported that huge amounts of water went missing from the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta and a state investigation was launched. The delta is a vital body of water, serving 23 million Californians as well as millions of farm acres, according to the Association for California Water Agencies.

The AP reported in February that a number of homeowners in Modesto, California, were fined $1,500 for allegedly taking water from a canal. In another instance, thieves in the town of North San Juan stole hundreds of gallons of water from a fire department tank.

myth of the common value system

jayhanson |  THE TRAGEDY OF THE COMMON REVISITED, by Beryl Crowe (1969); reprinted in MANAGING THE COMMONS, by Garrett Hardin and John Baden W.H. Freeman, 1977; ISBN 0-7167-0476-5

"There has developed in the contemporary natural sciences a recognition that there is a subset of problems, such as population, atomic war, and environmental corruption, for which there are no technical solutions.

"There is also an increasing recognition among contemporary social scientists that there is a subset of problems, such as population, atomic war, environmental corruption, and the recovery of a livable urban environment, for which there are no current political solutions. The thesis of this article is that the common area shared by these two subsets contains most of the critical problems that threaten the very existence of contemporary man." [p. 53]

ASSUMPTIONS NECESSARY TO AVOID THE TRAGEDY

"In passing the technically insoluble problems over to the political and social realm for solution, Hardin made three critical assumptions:

a. that there exists, or can be developed, a 'criterion of judgment and system of weighting . . .' that will 'render the incommensurables . . . commensurable . . . ' in real life;

b. that, possessing this criterion of judgment, 'coercion can be mutually agreed upon,' and that the application of coercion to effect a solution to problems will be effective in modern society; and

c. that the administrative system, supported by the criterion of judgment and access to coercion, can and will protect the commons from further desecration." [p. 55]

ERODING MYTH OF THE COMMON VALUE SYSTEM

"In America there existed, until very recently, a set of conditions which perhaps made the solution to Hardin's subset possible; we lived with the myth that we were 'one people, indivisible. . . .' This myth postulated that we were the great 'melting pot' of the world wherein the diverse cultural ores of Europe were poured into the crucible of the frontier experience to produce a new alloy -- an American civilization. This new civilization was presumably united by a common value system that was democratic, equalitarian, and existing under universally enforceable rules contained in the Constitution and the Bill of Rights.

"In the United States today, however, there is emerging a new set of behavior patterns which suggest that the myth is either dead or dying. Instead of believing and behaving in accordance with the myth, large sectors of the population are developing life-styles and value hierarchies that give contemporary Americans an appearance more closely analogous to the particularistic, primitive forms of 'tribal' organizations in geographic proximity than to that shining new alloy, the American civilization." [p. 56]

"Looking at a more recent analysis of the sickness of the core city, Wallace F. Smith has argued that the productive model of the city is no longer viable for the purposes of economic analysis. Instead, he develops a model of the city as a site for leisure consumption, and then seems to suggest that the nature of this model is such is such that the city cannot regain its health because the leisure demands are value-based and, hence do not admit to compromise and accommodation; consequently there is no way of deciding among these value- oriented demands that are being made on the core city.

"In looking for the cause of the erosion of the myth of a common value system, it seems to me that so long as our perceptions and knowledge of other groups were formed largely through the written media of communication, the American myth that we were a giant melting pot of equalitarians could be sustained. In such a perceptual field it is tenable, if not obvious, that men are motivated by interests. Interests can always be compromised and accommodated without undermining our very being by sacrificing values. Under the impact of electronic media, however, this psychological distance has broken down and now we discover that these people with whom we could formerly compromise on interests are not, after all, really motivated by interests but by values. Their behavior in our very living room betrays a set of values, moreover, that are incompatible with our own, and consequently the compromises that we make are not those of contract but of culture. While the former are acceptable, any form of compromise on the latter is not a form of rational behavior but is rather a clear case of either apostasy or heresy. Thus we have arrived not at an age of accommodation but one of confrontation. In such an age 'incommensurables' remain 'incommensurable' in real life." [p. 59]

EROSION OF THE MYTH OF THE MONOPOLY OF COERCIVE FORCE

"In the past, those who no longer subscribed to the values of the dominant culture were held in check by the myth that the state possessed a monopoly on coercive force. This myth has undergone continual erosion since the end of World War II owing to the success of the strategy of guerrilla warfare, as first revealed to the French in Indochina, and later conclusively demonstrated in Algeria. Suffering as we do from what Senator Fulbright has called 'the arrogance of power,' we have been extremely slow to learn the lesson in Vietnam, although we now realize that war is political and cannot be won by military means. It is apparent that the myth of the monopoly of coercive force as it was first qualified in the civil rights conflict in the South, then in our urban ghettos, next on the streets of Chicago, and now on our college campuses has lost its hold over the minds of Americans. The technology of guerrilla warfare has made it evident that, while the state can win battles, it cannot win wars of values. Coercive force which is centered in the modern state cannot be sustained in the face of the active resistance of some 10 percent of the population unless the state is willing to embark on a deliberate policy of genocide directed against the value dissident groups. The factor that sustained the myth of coercive force in the past was the acceptance of a common value system. Whether the latter exists is questionable in the modern nation-state." [pp. 59-60]

EROSION OF THE MYTH OF ADMINISTRATORS OF THE COMMONS

"Indeed, the process has been so widely commented upon that one writer postulated a common life cycle for all of the attempts to develop regulatory policies. The life cycle is launched by an outcry so widespread and demanding that it generates enough political force to bring about establishment of a regulatory agency to insure the equitable, just, and rational distribution of the advantages among all holders of interest in the commons. This phase is followed by the symbolic reassurance of the offended as the agency goes into operation, developing a period of political quiescence among the great majority of those who hold a general but unorganized interest in the commons. Once this political quiescence has developed, the highly organized and specifically interested groups who wish to make incursions into the commons bring sufficient pressure to bear through other political processes to convert the agency to the protection and furthering of their interests. In the last phase even staffing of the regulating agency is accomplished by drawing the agency  administrators from the ranks of the regulated." [pp. 60-61].

whole buncha acewholes disavowed and their double-00 status rescinded...,

zerohedge |  But according to NBC News, which has reportedly been conducting their own investigation for the last several years, Hersh’s claims aren’t that inaccurate after all.

Two intelligence sources tell NBC News that the year before the U.S. raid that killed Osama bin Laden, a “walk in” asset from Pakistani intelligence told the CIA where the most wanted man in the world was hiding – and these two sources plus a third say that the Pakistani government knew where bin Laden was hiding all along.

The U.S. government has always characterized the heroic raid by Seal Team Six that killed bin Laden as a unilateral U.S. operation, and has maintained that the CIA found him by tracking couriers to his walled complex in Abbottabad, Pakistan.

The new revelations do not necessarily cast doubt on the overall narrative that the White House began circulating within hours of the May 2011 operation. The official story about how bin Laden was found was constructed in a way that protected the identity and existence of the asset, who also knew who inside the Pakistani government was aware of the Pakistani intelligence agency’s operation to hide bin Laden, according to a special operations officer with prior knowledge of the bin Laden mission. The official story focused on a long hunt for bin Laden’s presumed courier, Ahmed al-Kuwaiti.
 …

The NBC News sources who confirm that a Pakistani intelligence official became a “walk in” asset include the special operations officer and a CIA officer who had served in Pakistan. These two sources and a third source, a very senior former U.S. intelligence official, also say that elements of the ISI were aware of bin Laden’s presence in Abbottabad. The former official was emphatic about the ISI’s awareness, saying twice, “They knew.”

The one thing that President Obama could hail as a success during his tenure as President has now been exposed as an outright lie.

 Slate  |  Here’s what NBC wrote earlier this week:

Two intelligence sources tell NBC News that the year before the U.S. raid that killed Osama bin Laden, a “walk in” asset from Pakistani intelligence told the CIA where the most wanted man in the world was hiding.

If true, that would be major news. But NBC now says it’s not actually true. Here’s what now appears atop NBC’s story on the walk-in:

Editor's Note: This story has been updated since it was first published. The original version of this story said that a Pakistani asset told the U.S. where bin Laden was hiding. Sources say that while the asset provided information vital to the hunt for bin Laden, he was not the source of his whereabouts.

While NBC’s story doesn’t use the word correction or retraction, that’s what this appears to be. The walk-in “did not provide the location of the al Qaeda leader’s Abottabad, Pakistan compound,” the story now says.

reducing grand-heroics and high-adventure to snitching, setting-up, and shooting an unarmed invalid in bed...,

democracynow |  Four years after U.S. forces assassinated Osama bin Laden, Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative reporter Seymour Hersh has published an explosive piece claiming much of what the Obama administration said about the attack was wrong. Hersh claims at the time of the U.S. raid, bin Laden had been held as a prisoner by Pakistani intelligence since 2006. Top Pakistani military leaders knew about the operation and provided key assistance. Contrary to U.S. claims that it located bin Laden by tracking his courier, a former Pakistani intelligence officer identified bin Laden’s whereabouts in return for the bulk of a $25 million U.S. bounty. Questions are also raised about whether bin Laden was actually buried at sea, as the U.S. claimed. Hersh says instead the Navy SEALs threw parts of bin Laden’s body into the Hindu Kush mountains from their helicopter. The White House claims the piece is "riddled with inaccuracies." Hersh joins us to lay out his findings and respond to criticism from government officials and media colleagues.

AMY GOODMAN: Four years ago this month, President Obama announced U.S. forces had killed Osama bin Laden in a raid on his hideout in Pakistan.

PRES. BARACK OBAMA: At my direction, the United States has launched a targeted operation against that compound in Abbottabad, Pakistan. A small team of Americans carried out the operation with extraordinary courage and capability. No Americans were harmed. They took care to avoid civilian casualties. After a firefight, they killed Osama Bin Laden and took custody of his body.

AARON MATÉ: But now a new investigation says the official story is a lie. In an explosive report the veteran journalist Seymour Hersh alleges a vast deception on everything from how bin Laden was found to how he was killed. According to Hersh, Pakistan detained bin Laden in 2006 and kept him prisoner with the backing of Saudi Arabia. In 2010 a Pakistani intelligence officer disclosed bin Laden’s location to the CIA. Hersh says the U.S. and Pakistan then struck a deal; the U.S. would raid bin Laden’s compound in Abbottabad but make it look as if Pakistan was unaware. In fact, Hersh says top Pakistani military leaders provided key help.

AMY GOODMAN: The report also challenges the initial U.S. account of how bin Laden was killed. Hersh says there was never a firefight inside the compound and that bin Laden himself was not armed. Questions are also raised about whether bin Laden was actually buried at sea as the U.S. claimed. Hersh says, instead the Navy SEALs threw parts of bin Laden’s body into the Hindu Kush mountains from their helicopter. The White House has rejected Hersh’s account of the bin Laden raid. Press Secretary Josh Earnest spoke to reporters on Monday.

36 hours for the "conspiracy theorist" to become awash in a flood of corroborations...,

thenation |  Fisher was too quick by half. For the rabbit hole indeed goes deep. Just after he posted his piece, NBC news—not just “mainstream” but solidly in the Obama White House camp—confirmed one key claim in Hersh’s report: “Two intelligence sources tell NBC News that the year before the U.S. raid that killed Osama bin Laden, a ‘walk in’ asset from Pakistani intelligence told the CIA where the most wanted man in the world was hiding—and these two sources plus a third say that the Pakistani government knew where bin Laden was hiding all along.” Other sources likewise confirmed at least the broad outlines of Hersh’s counter-narrative, and as they did, the pushback against Hersh went, as Adam Johnson at FAIR put, from “this is a lie” to “what’s the big deal, we knew this all along” (everybody should follow Johnson’s twitter feed).

Fisher’s not alone in accusing Hersh of frivolity (I had hopes for Fisher, who after the New Republic implosion wrote a thoughtful reflection on that magazine’s racism. But he’s since done one of the stupider pieces I’ve read on Ecuador’s Rafael Correa; Vox seems to be trying to fill the vacuum left by The New Republic when it comes to writing silly things about Latin America). To accuse Hersh of falling under the thrall of “conspiracy theory” is to repudiate the whole enterprise of investigative journalism that Hersh helped pioneer. What has he written that wasn’t a conspiracy? But Fisher, and others, believe Hersh went too far when in a 2011 speech he made mention of the Knights of Malta and Opus Dei, tagging him as a Dan Brown fantasist. Here’s Fisher, in his debunking of Hersh’s recent essay: “The moment when a lot of journalists started to question whether Hersh had veered from investigative reporting into something else came in January 2011. That month, he spoke at Georgetown University’s branch campus in Qatar, where he gave a bizarre and rambling address alleging that top military and special forces leaders ‘are all members of, or at least supporters of, Knights of Malta.… many of them are members of Opus Dei.’”

But here’s Steve Coll, a reporter who remains within the acceptable margins, writing in Ghost Wars about Reagan’s CIA director, William Casey: “He was a Catholic Knight of Malta educated by Jesuits. Statues of the Virgin Mary filled his mansion.… He attended Mass daily and urged Christian faith upon anyone who asked his advice…. He believed fervently that by spreading the Catholic church’s reach and power he could contain communism’s advance, or reverse it.” Oliver North, Casey’s Iran/Contra co-conspirator, worshiped at a “’charismatic’ Episcopalian church in Virginia called Church of the Apostles, which is organized into cell groups.”

Not too long ago, Ben Bradlee Jr. (son of no less an establishment figure than the editor of The Washington Post), could draw the connections between the shadowy national security state and right-wing Christianity: Iran/Contra was about many things, among them a right-wing Christian reaction against the growing influence of left-wing Liberation Theology in Latin America. Likewise, the US’s post-9/11 militarism was about many things, among them the reorganization of those right-wing Christians against what they identified as a greater existential threat than Liberation Theology: political Islam. Fisher should know this, as it was reported here, here, and here, among many other places.

Eager to debunk Hersh, it’s Fisher who has fallen down the rabbit hole of imperial amnesia.

the loneliness of seymour hersh...,

newrepublic |  Ten years ago, Sy Hersh was a widely celebrated journalist, considered one of the best at digging up the dark secrets behind the official stories of our various wars. Now, with his alternate history of the killing of Osama bin Laden, Hersh has “gone off the rails” and is “lost in a wilderness of mirrors.” What happened? It could be that the longtime New Yorker reporter has lost it. But possibly, maybe, a teeny tiny factor might be that there’s a Democrat in the White House—a combination of liberal reluctance to criticize President Barack Obama with conservative reluctance to criticize the military.

The response to Hersh’s 10,000-word London Review of Books report is dominated by skepticism, if not outright mockery. CNN’s Peter Bergen debunks Hersh’s “Allegations of massive cover-up.” Vox’s Max Fisher scoffs at “a story that accuses hundreds of people across three governments of staging a massive international hoax that has gone on for years.” Daily Telegraph Pakistan correspondent Rob Crilly calls it a “conspiracy theory” that will fool “the soft minded.”

You might expect conservatives to run with the dark comedy of the Obama White House scrambling to make up lies to take advantage of the death of America's No. 1 foe in an election year—only to watch those lies spiral out of control and create more foreign policy problems. But Rush Limbaugh led his show on Monday by talking about the usual stuff, Michelle Obama playing the "race card" or whatever. The conservative blog Hot Air said, “The first issue in any story written by Seymour Hersh is … Seymour Hersh. He has a habit of running with single-source stories that don’t pan out in the long run, and this tale has a number of red flags.” PJ Media’s Michael Walsh shrugs, “In the wilderness of mirrors that is the intelligence community and the Obama White House, believe almost nothing. Easier on your sanity that way.” Free Republic posters mostly made fun of the idea of a Muslim burial at sea; one lamented, "he meanders but the story gets down to the usual liberal bleeding-heart 'waterboarding-doesn’t-work' nonsense at the end." Even conspiracy theorist Alex Jones’ Infowars could only offer recycled outrage from years earlier.

This reaction would make sense if Hersh’s story actually described an epic hoax—like that bin Laden actually died years earlier, say, or that he’s a secret prisoner in Guantanamo, or that he’s partying right now in a CIA-funded discotheque in Tehran. But Hersh’s narrative doesn’t change all that much from the current Obama administration official story. The main takeaway is that Pakistan knew bin Laden was living in Abbottabad and that he was essentially a prisoner of Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence agency. Hersh reports there was a plan for a bigger lie—the government would claim bin Laden was killed by a drone in the Hindu Kush mountains—which was never told because the helicopter crash at the Abbottabad compound would have raised too many questions. What Hersh claims were outright lies are the most Hollywood-esque flourishes of the official story: that the U.S. found bin Laden by tracking his courier, and that bin Laden’s body was buried at sea. These would be big lies (and a serious scandal) for any president of the United States. But in Hersh’s telling, there is a cover-up but not much of a crime. Ultimately, that’s Hersh’s point: “High-level lying nevertheless remains the modus operandi of US policy."

rule of law: elite, establishment politics, psyops, and livestock management methods

Kahneman |  Another scholar and friend whom I greatly admire, Cass Sunstein, disagrees sharply with Slovic’s stance on the different views of experts and citizens, and defends the role of experts as a bulwark against “populist” excesses. Sunstein is one of the foremost legal scholars in the United States, and shares with other leaders of his profession the attribute of intellectual fearlessness. He knows he can master any body of knowledge quickly and thoroughly, and he has mastered many, including both the psychology of judgment and choice and issues of regulation and risk policy. His view is that the existing system of regulation in the United States displays a very poor setting of priorities, which reflects reaction to public pressures more than careful objective analysis. He starts from the position that risk regulation and government intervention to reduce risks should be guided by rational weighting of costs and benefits, and that the natural units for this analysis are the number of lives saved (or perhaps the number of life-years saved, which gives more weight to saving the young) and the dollar cost to the economy. Poor regulation is wasteful of lives and money, both of which can be measured objectively. Sunstein has not been persuaded by Slovic’s argument that risk and its measurement is subjective. Many aspects of risk assessment are debatable, but he has faith in the objectivity that may be achieved by science, expertise, and careful deliberation.

Sunstein came to believe that biased reactions to risks are an important source of erratic and misplaced priorities in public policy. Lawmakers and regulators may be overly responsive to the irrational concerns of citizens, both because of political sensitivity and because they are prone to the same cognitive biases as other citizens.

Sunstein and a collaborator, the jurist Timur Kuran, invented a name for the mechanism through which biases flow into policy: the availability cascade. They comment that in the social context, “all heuristics are equal, but availability is more equal than the others.” They have in mind an expanded notion of the heuristic, in which availability provides a heuristic for judgments other than frequency. In particular, the importance of an idea is often judged by the fluency (and emotional charge) with which that idea comes to mind.

An availability cascade is a self-sustaining chain of events, which may start from media reports of a relatively minor event and lead up to public panic and large-scale government action. On some occasions, a media story about a risk catches the attention of a segment of the public, which becomes aroused and worried. This emotional reaction becomes a story in itself, prompting additional coverage in the media, which in turn produces greater concern and involvement. The cycle is sometimes sped along deliberately by “availability entrepreneurs,” individuals or organizations who work to ensure a continuous flow of worrying news. The danger is increasingly exaggerated as the media compete for attention-grabbing headlines. Scientists and others who try to dampen the increasing fear and revulsion attract little attention, most of it hostile: anyone who claims that the danger is overstated is suspected of association with a “heinous cover-up.” The issue becomes politically important because it is on everyone’s mind, and the response of the political system is guided by the intensity of public sentiment. The availability cascade has now reset priorities. Other risks, and other ways that resources could be applied for the public good, all have faded into the background.

absolute capitalism to bestow essence upon those whom GOD has denied....,

dailymail |  The procedure may help the many men who cannot develop sperm themselves.

Isabelle Cuoc, the firm’s CEO, said: ‘Kallistem is addressing a major issue whose impacts are felt worldwide: the treatment of male infertility.

‘Our team is the first in the world to have developed the technology required to obtain fully formed spermatozoa [sperm] in vitro with sufficient yield for IVF.

‘This is a major scientific outcome that enhances both our credibility and our development potential.

‘We are targeting a global market worth several billion euros in which there are currently no players.’

Spermatogenesis, the process through which the basic reproduction cells develop into sperm, is an extremely complex one.

It usually takes 72 days to take place in the human body, with a constant supply of basic cells being transformed into mature sperm.

But some men suffer from nonobstructive azoospermia - or abnormal sperm production - rendering them infertile.

Scientists have been trying for 15 years to develop a procedure to extract immature spermatogonia from infertile men, transform it into mature men, and use IVF to produce a child.

They have previously shown they can artificially replicate the procedure in mice, but this is the first time is has been successfully shown to work using human cells.

The next stage is to demonstrate that the procedure is safe in pre-clinical trials, which will take place next year.

If the pre-clinical trials are a success, Kallistem claim they will be a position in 2017 to assist the birth of a baby in clinical trials.

They will remove a sample of immature spermatogonia from a man’s testicles in a simple biopsy, transform the genetic material into mature sperm, and then use it in traditional IVF procedures.

essence has no rights absolute capitalism is bound to acknowledge?

Quadrant |  Despite warnings by moral conservatives, advances in genetics and reproductive technology have created the conditions for a consumer-driven mass eugenics industry. Like it or not, science has is about to pose a slather of moral, ethical and societal dilemmas

 A legal, social and biological revolution is taking place worldwide without much serious thinking of the consequences. Consider this: in Britain the House of Commons recently approved the use of “three-parent IVF” to remove defective mitochondrial DNA from babies.[1]

 

Each year in Britain about 100 children are born with mutated mitochondrial DNA, resulting in about ten cases of fatal disease to the liver, nerves or heart. A new in vitro fertilisation (IVF) technique developed at the University of Newcastle allows doctors to replace a mother’s defective mitochondrial DNA with that of a healthy donor, presumably using pre-implantation sequencing and microscopic operation on the zygote. Mitochondrial DNA does not affect appearance, personality or intelligence, and it reduces kinship—genetic similarity—by only about 1 per cent. Still, the resulting child, though its nuclear DNA would come from its main parents, would have three parents.

Critics warned that this would set society off down a slippery slope to eugenics and “designer babies”. A government official, the “British Fertility Regulator”, replied to this warning with the observation that most people support the therapy. This was intended to assuage the concerns expressed. In fact it would seem to confirm them, since widespread support for a product or service indicates a readiness to adopt it. Sure enough, though there had been little public discussion in advance of the Commons debate, the new techniques were nonetheless approved by a large parliamentary majority. Australian scientists have since called for the British policy to be emulated.[2]

Despite half a century of warnings by moral conservatives, advances in genetics and reproductive technology have created the conditions for a consumer-driven mass eugenics industry. Here is the Oxford dictionary definition of “Eugenics”: “the science of improving a population by controlled breeding to increase the occurrence of desirable heritable characteristics”. It has a bad historical reputation because authoritarian governments have denied civil liberties in the name of eugenics. But as we shall see, both the definition and the reputation of eugenics have been overtaken by advances in science, medicine and marketing. Eugenics has since reappeared in many countries in the form of voluntary genetics counselling—a medical service provided to help parents avoid genetic disorders in their children[3]; and IVF has become a sizeable industry that offers parents the genetic screening of embryos and other eugenic choices.

Genetic improvement is becoming a market phenomenon—a situation discernible as long ago as the 1980s when Daniel Kevles, the leading historian of eugenics in the USA, quoted a biotechnology expert thus: “‘Human improvement’ is a fact of life, not because of the state … but because of consumer demand.”[4]

pan-troglodytic deuterostems claiming rights no absolute capitalist is bound to acknowledge..,

aljazeera |  The city of Detroit was set to send out notices Monday to about 25,000 households with overdue water bills, giving them 10 days to seek assistance from the city or lose water service.

The notices, in the form of fliers hanging from doorknobs, mark the latest chapter in the months-long saga of the Motor City’s bankruptcy. Making sure Detroit’s poorest residents pay for their water has been a priority for city officials, but threats of shutoffs have outraged activists and attracted the attention of United Nations human rights advocates.

About 73,000 residential households were at least two months late on their water payments as of March 3, according to The Detroit Free Press. 

Last summer the city created the Detroit Water Fund, a pool of money intended for those indebted to the Detroit Water and Sewerage Department, according to The Detroit News. The fund is meant for people whose annual income is below 150 percent of the federal poverty threshold, or no more than $17,655 for an individual and $36,375 for a family of four.

"The bottom line is whether you are in that category or not, you need to come in and get on a payment plan," Gary Brown, the city’s chief operating officer, told The Detroit News.

"Then you will be assured that your water will not be cut off. If you ignore billing, if you ignore the door knocker and don't come in and get on a payment plan, then we don't know how to help you,” he said.

The notices apply to people who are at least 60 days late on their bills, The Detroit News reported.

girls have no rights medieval livestock managers are bound to acknowledge...,

RT |  Some 92 percent of married women in Egypt underwent female genital mutilation, the country’s health minister said, citing a recent study. He added that the majority of girls face this ordeal when they are only nine to 12 years old.

The results of the Egypt Demographic and Health Survey (EDHS) were announced by Health Minister Adel Adawy at a Sunday conference dedicated to the study, Egyptian media reported. The poll was carried out last year and involved women aged 15 to 49.

 

According to the minister, only 31 percent of the operations are carried out by doctors, with most being performed by traditional midwives and “health barbers.”

 

The rate of female circumcision in rural places is extremely high – almost 95 percent while in urban areas it reaches 39.2 percent, the minister said. 

The study claimed that more than half of married women in the country are in favor of genital mutilation. Only 30 percent of women say it should be banned, the study said. 

Egypt’s top Islamic authority has condemned the practice as “un-Islamic” and “barbaric.” Female circumcision was banned in 2008. The offenders may be sentenced to prison (from three months to two years) or fined between 1,000 and 5,000 Egyptian pounds. 

In January, an Egyptian doctor, Raslan Fadl, was sentenced to two years in jail for performing a female genital mutilation procedure which killed a young girl. Thirteen-year-old Sohair al-Bata’a died in June 2013 following the surgery.

Female Genital Mutilation (FGM), a traditional practice to partially or completely remove the outer sexual organs, is mainly practiced in Africa and in a few countries in the Middle East (Yemen, Kurdish communities, Saudi Arabia) and Asia. 

Up to 140 million women and girls worldwide have been subjected to FGM, the World Health Organization (WHO) says.

nothing like a little sunshine to disinfect seattle pd

The Stranger | For most of their lives, Eric Rachner and Phil Mocek had no strong feelings about police. Mocek, who grew up in Kansas, said he regarded police officers as honorable civil servants, like firefighters. Both chose careers as programmers: Rachner, 39, is an independent cyber-security expert, while Mocek, 40, works on administrative software used by dentists.

But through their shrewd use of Washington's Public Records Act, the two Seattle residents are now the closest thing the city has to a civilian police-oversight board. In the last year and a half, they have acquired hundreds of reports, videos, and 911 calls related to the Seattle Police Department's internal investigations of officer misconduct between 2010 and 2013. And though they have only combed through a small portion of the data, they say they have found several instances of officers appearing to lie, use racist language, and use excessive force—with no consequences. In fact, they believe that the Office of Professional Accountability (OPA) has systematically "run interference" for cops. In the aforementioned cases of alleged officer misconduct, all of the involved officers were exonerated and still remain on the force.

"We're trying to do OPA's job for them because OPA was so explicitly not interested in doing their own job," said Rachner.

Among some of Rachner and Mocek's findings: a total of 1,028 SPD employees (including civilian employees) were investigated between 2010 and 2013. (The current number of total SPD staff is 1,820.) Of the 11 most-investigated employees—one was investigated 18 times during the three-year period—every single one of them is still on the force, according to SPD.

In 569 allegations of excessive or inappropriate use of force (arising from 363 incidents), only seven were sustained—meaning 99 percent of cases were dismissed. Exoneration rates were only slightly smaller when looking at all the cases between 2010 and 2013—of the total 4,407 allegations, 284 were sustained.

the men with guns work for the cephalopod molluscs...,

globalresearch |  "Once again a country “liberated” by the West is sinking deeper and deeper into chaos.” Global Research. 

This could be anyone of the countries in conflict, where Washington and its Western and Middle Eastern stooges sow war – eternal chaos, misery, death – and submission.

This is precisely the point: The Washington / NATO strategy is not to ‘win’ a war or conflict, but to create ongoing – endless chaos. That’s the way (i) to control people, nations and their resources; (ii) to assures the west a continuous need for military – troops and equipment – remember more than 50% of the US GDP depends on the military industrial complex, related industries and services; and (iii) finally, a country in disarray or chaos, is broke and needs money – money with hardship conditions, ‘austerity’ money from the notorious IMF, World Bank and other associated nefarious ‘development institutions’ and money lenders; money that equals enslavement, especially with corrupt leaders that do not care for their people.

That’s the name of the game – in Yemen, in Ukraine, in Syria, in Iraq, in Sudan, in Central Africa, in Libya…. you name it. Who fights against whom is unimportant. ISIS / ISIL / IS / DAISH / DAESH / Al-Qaeda and whatever other names for the mercenary killer organizations you want to add to the list – are just tags to confuse. You might as well add Blackwater, Xe, Academi and all its other successive names chosen to escape easy recognition. They are prostitutes for the Zionist-Anglo-Saxon Empire, prostitutes of the lowest level. Then come elite prostitutes, like Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Bahrain and other Gulf States, plus the UK and France, of course.

President Hollande has just signed a multi-billion euro contract with Qatar for the sale of 24 Rafale fighter jets. He is now heading to Riyadh for talks with the Saudi King Salman, and to sell more Rafale planes – it’s good business and helps killing off the fabricated enemies; and also to attend a Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) summit on 5 May. Topics of discussions at the meeting are the ‘crises’ of the region including in Yemen, planted by the west on behalf of Washington (and its Zionist masters) and blamed on the ‘rebels’ who are seeking merely a more just government.

The west has invented a vocabulary so sick, it’s like a virus ingrained in our brains – or what’s left of it – that we don’t even know anymore what the words really mean. We repeat them and believe them. After all, the MSM drills them into our intestines day-in and day-out. People who fight for their freedom, for survival against oppressive regimes, are ‘terrorists’, ‘rebels’. – The refugees from Africa, from the Washington inflicted conflict-stricken countries, the refugees of whom more than 4,000 have already perished this year trying to cross the Mediterranean for a ‘better life’ – they have been conveniently renamed ‘immigrants’. Often the term ‘illegal’ is added. Thus, the west’s conscience is whitewashed from guilt. Immigrants are beggars. Illegal immigrants belong jailed. They have nothing to do with unrest and chaos planted by the west in the ‘immigrants’ home countries. – Shame on you, Brussels!

dear humanity, you have a "men with guns" problem...,

commondreams |  "It's time to talk about what's next. It is time for Americans to think boldly about ... what it will take to move our country to a very different place, one where outcomes that are truly sustainable, equitable, and democratic are commonplace."

Those are the words of academic and author Gar Alperovitz, founder of the Democracy Collaborative, who—alongside veteran environmentalist Gus Speth—this week launched a new initiative called the "Next System Project" which seeks to address the interrelated threats of financial inequality, planetary climate disruption, and money-saturated democracies by advocating for deep, heretofore radical transformations of the current systems that govern the world's economies, energy systems, and political institutions.

As part of the launch, the Next System Project produced this video which features prominent progressive figures such as actor and activist Danny Glover, economist Juliet Schor, 350.org co-founder Bill McKibben, labor rights activist Sarita Gupta, and others:

According to the project's website, the effort is a response to a tangible and widespread "hunger for a new way forward" capable of addressing various social problems by injecting "the central idea of system change" into the public discourse. The goal of the project—described as an ambitious multi-year initiative—would be to formulate, refine, and publicize "comprehensive alternative political-economic system models" that would, in practice, prove that achieving "superior social, economic and ecological outcomes" is not just desirable, but possible.

"By defining issues systemically," the project organizers explain, "we believe we can begin to move the political conversation beyond current limits with the aim of catalyzing a substantive debate about the need for a radically different system and how we might go about its construction. Despite the scale of the difficulties, a cautious and paradoxical optimism is warranted. There are real alternatives. Arising from the unforgiving logic of dead ends, the steadily building array of promising new proposals and alternative institutions and experiments, together with an explosion of ideas and new activism, offer a powerful basis for hope."

The mission statement of the project—articulated in a short document titled It's Time to Face the Depth of the Systemic Crisis We Confront (pdf)—has been endorsed by an impressive list of more than 350 contemporary journalists, activists, academics, and thought leaders from various disciplines who all agree  the current political and economic system is serving the interests of "corporate profits, the growth of GDP, and the projection of national power" while ignoring the needs and wellbeing of people, communities, ecosystems and the planet as a whole.