Reuven Brenner — Past perfect – Stephen K. Bannon’s generational view of history

One of the best assessments of Steve Bannon I have encountered. It is based the major influences on the development of Bannon's social, political and economic perspective as a strategist and political thinker. And it has the added advantage of being a short read.

Asia Times
Past perfect — Stephen K. Bannon’s generational view of historyReuven Brenner | Repap Chair at McGill University’s Desautels Faculty of Management

DSWright — White House Approved CIA Hacking Of Senate Computers

According to a report by the CIA Inspector General, the White House was informed of the CIA’s plan to hack US Senate computers to discover what was going to be in the Senate Torture Report. CIA Director John Brennan met with White House chief of staff Denis McDonough then ordered CIA employees to “use whatever means necessary” to find out what Senate investigators knew. 

Given the White House’s role in the illegal hacking of Senate computers it becomes obvious why the Justice Department headed by President Obama-appointed Attorney General Eric Holder is not likely to bring charges against the CIA – charges against the CIA could lead back to the White House. 

The specific content of the conversation between Brennan and McDonough is not disclosed but after the conversation Brennan instructed his subordinates at the CIA to trash the Constitution and engage in espionage activity against the US Senate.

Firedoglake
White House Approved CIA Hacking Of Senate Computers
DSWright

John Pilger — Propaganda’s Triumph over Journalism

“When the truth is replaced by silence,” said the Soviet dissident Yevtushenko, “the silence is a lie.”

Consortiums News
Propaganda’s Triumph over Journalism
John Pilger

How May We Permit Ourselves To Scale Up The Product of GROUP_LEARNING X GROUP_CREATING?

   (Commentary posted by Roger Erickson)



We've all learned a lot, since bumping into Warren Mosler, branching out of other fields, and having to learn what we didn't want to have to know about ... namely the difference between sane and insane aggregate economic policy.

Yet it's not at all clear what that knowledge gets us, if we don't know how to leverage what we all now know.

There's a famous, very old quote (dubiously attributed to Caesar), that triggered a still evolving thought process.

"It's better to create than to learn. Creating is the essence of life." JC, ~50BC

Yet where would individuals or electorates be, if they hadn't LEARNED that insight? :( [They'd be roughly where WE are?]

2000 yrs later, we've only slightly restated that train of thought.

“If only HP knew what HP knows, we’d be three times more productive." then-CEO Lew Platt, of HP

Platt's quote is touted as key to the explosively growing field of knowledge management or "KM", proving that all humanity can, will and does miss it's own, prior points.

What IS the obvious point? If we marry together the lessons attributed to Caesar, Darwin & Shewhart//Deming, we get: 

"If we all continuously learned & shared just how little we all need to share, in real time, in order for our nation to CREATE faster/leaner/better culture ... then we'd never have to worry about our Democracy." RGE :)

It seems obvious that we can't separate learning & creating ... except by dying. 

Our REAL, not just nominal, question is how to scale up the product of GROUP_LEARNING x GROUP_CREATING.

Any ideas about new methods that would allow us to create more of that "product?" 

We are NOT constrained by a net lack of knowledge.

Rather, we're lacking methods for letting ourselves sample enough KNOWN options. Worse, we have known option-exploring methods, but lack methods for allowing ourselves to apply distributed use of those subclasses of known methods, whether little or widely known. 

The outcome is that our population is in the same situation as HP's staff was 20 years ago. The US electorate is overflowing with knowledge and practiced methods ... and lacks only a few extra submethods for triggering exploration of national options. Those options can be better explored WITH an ongoing cascade of parsing methods, from best known methods (if they still apply to a non-recognizable pattern, or new context), to desparately_random trial & error.

The more I ponder this, the more our current Democracy reminds me of a patient with Parkinson's disease. Those patients can initially DO most things if prompted by triggering cues, but progressively suffer from declining ability to self-trigger their own voluntary actions. Their symptoms start with difficulty triggering physical movements, and progress to inability to trigger voluntary thoughts, and eventually even autonomic impulses such as breathing.

The evolved operations of vertebrate behavior-motor physiology reveal sub-parts of the basal ganglia as critical brain structures which "gate" all the inter-dependency circuits allowing conditional behavior of individuals.

The factors gating the more distributed functions of a human culture are not specific cultural ganglia. Rather, they are the distributed checks & balances we attempt to maintain, and the sub-methods we employ for creating, KEEPING and extending necessary cultural checks and balances.

We always need NEW METHODS, for tuning and adding to our repertoire of checks and balances, the operations we depend upon in order to explore our emerging options.

The only thing we know for sure about choosing the policy-formation methods we need is that they must help us steer - faster/leaner/better - through the unpredictable obstacle course that we loosely call "succeeding contexts."

Does that help? What core methods can we employ MORE of, in order to create, KEEP and extend the distributed checks and balances which we continuously need MORE of?

Ian Millhiser — Catholic Bishops To House: Shut Down The Government Unless We Get Our Way On Birth Control

One week before House Republicans shut down the government in an effort to force President Obama to enact many of their preferred policies, the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops wrote House members requesting that the government be shut down — and potentially that the nation be forced into default — unless religious employers were given a special right to deny birth control coverage to their employees.

This is a devastating criticism and echoes just what Pope Francis said he does not want, indicating a breakdown of papal authority. Of course, if the pope wish to exert authority is fully able to do so. We'll see his reaction to this snub, or better, poke in the eye.

Think Progress
Catholic Bishops To House: Shut Down The Government Unless We Get Our Way On Birth ControlIan Millhiser

When hostage taking works to exact ransom, then hostage taking becomes the norm.

This is much more the case in parliamentary government, which is likely why the Founding Fathers eschewed it in favor of a Roman style republic controlled by the power elite through the Senate and a strong chief executive rather than a prime minister.

In a two party, winner take all system, the calculation is based on opportunity cost between the two chief options, so the Founding Fathers structured the Constitution to allow for not only competition between the two chief power elites but also the necessity to compromise to prevent a zero-sum game unless one power elite could dominate all branches of government over a considerable period.

The good thing is that the Bush unitary executive doctrine seems to be discredited by his own party, although it will almost certainly be revived in a GOP administration unless Democrats are willing to similarly obstruct government. If the GOP sets a precedent in this regard, it is virtually certain that the next round of Democrats will be much more radical and adopt the same tactics, ensuring on-going political gridlock.

The Guardian — Alan Grayson's requests for NSA information – read the correspondence

Emails show how Democratic congressman Alan Grayson repeatedly asked to meet John C Inglis, the deputy director of the NSA, but was continually rebuffed

The Guardian (UK)
Alan Grayson's requests for NSA information – read the correspondence

Makes one wonder what else the US government is hiding behind the wall of national security and the surveillance state.