Sunday, June 29, 2014

Bill Moyers and Charles Lewis

Bill Moyers is another great man in our times. He's brilliant, articulate, brave, and a whole bunch of other great adjectives.

Please click here to view his interview with Charles Lewis, author of "935 lies", which they discuss.


Bill

Friday, June 27, 2014

Andrew Bacevich

Andrew Bacevich is an astonishing man. His grasp of American foreign policy, and his ability to explain it in words average people can understand leaves him with few peers.

Please see this too-short (22 minute) video interview, available in an article run by the Huffington Post (it's the 2nd video down on the page). Reader comments are always interesting.

It's long been my intention to talk about my favorite thinkers as I discover them. Thanks to the Internet, this learning process has accelerated beyond anything I could imagine as a kid. In those days we had the newspaper, the radio and some television. Today I can sit here, as I often do, and page through my constantly improving list of information sources. What can be learned, and the speed with which this happens, continues to amaze me on an almost daily basis.

Here, today, a perfect example occurred. After listening to Bacevich, I felt like I had been brought to yet another level of understanding because he knew the words to bring it together. To be sure, I'm not saying any of this is new information as his understandings coincide with my own, with so much unsaid that I look forward to more from him, but we'll get to that it seems.

My difficulty, once I had this information, was that I couldn't pass it on. The obstacle I kept running into was going against the grain of the MSM propaganda, who people trusted to their peril as it marched them off to war time and time again.

Andrew Bacevich does have the knowledge and he has the verbal/thinking skills to sort it out and explain it. We are lucky to have him to listen to.


Bill

Monday, April 21, 2014

Will there be justice?

Please see "International Lawyers Seek Justice for Iraqis" by Dahr Jamail

The conference represents the most powerful and most current organized attempt in the world to bring justice to those responsible for the catastrophe in Iraq ..

Their goal for the conference was to begin taking concrete steps toward international lawsuits that will bring former UK Prime Minister Tony Blair and former US President George W. Bush, along with those responsible in their administrations, to justice for the myriad war crimes committed in Iraq.

"Adriaensens is aiming to generate one massive lawsuit that condemns former (and current) members of the US and UK governments for war crimes, crimes against humanity and crimes against peace for their roles in the Iraq invasion and occupation."

Many people were duped by our information supply into supporting the invasion of Iraq. But now time has gone my and people have had the time to think about it, and likely have spoken with better informed people and the "alternate news" along the way, and now have a better sense of what happened.

By now, hopefully, a majority of Americans (and Brits) have come to realize that we've been duped and the total injustice of that invasion demands these proceedings and the justice that is likely to follow. Without a belief in justice we will -deservedly - lose it all.

Bill

An Indictment of the Invisible Hand

Please see "An Indictment of the Invisible Hand" by Jeffrey Madrick, Moyers & Company

Writing about Thomas Piketty's 700-page book, Capital in the Twenty-First Century, some quotes:

The only way to rectify the imbalance is more aggressive taxes on property and high incomes to reduce inequality.

some of this capital has been put to good use, but as it grows so much faster than the economy, it seems more than obvious that it is the result of monopoly, rents that are not related to real returns of investment, manipulation of markets and regulations, political influence, and so on. Free market competition has not worked.

Instead, he believes higher taxes are the only solution. But regulation of monopolists and Wall Street manipulators would be part of such a solution. More vigorous anti-trust prosecution would be another. Fairer and more strongly implemented labor laws would have given workers a fairer shake, as would more union-friendly regulations and a higher minimum wage.


Bill

Saturday, March 22, 2014

Moral injury

Please read A Warrior’s Moral Dilemma

At last, a clear, comprehensive and totally compelling analysis of what serving in war and combat really does to people. Everyone in America - indeed, the world - should read this paper very carefully, digest what it's saying and learn from the very clear lessons.

I think the root problem lies in the fact that people making decisions of our behalf don't have our consent on the most urgent matters of our time. Big Money seized control of our democracy, and a relative handful of barons at the top are doing what pleases them, and they are getting away with doing it in our name. Their MSM counterpart not only sold us on their evil designs, but they got us thanking and honoring their soldiers for their service. See this article for a real life description of what that service actually looks like.

Their projection of the "hero" is now shattered, hopefully forever, by actual historical records and writers like David Wood. Now it's time for all of us to access the situation and do something about it.

The approach I believe will work is to use the Internet to provide the basic mechanics for a money-free, corruption proof, election system. It can be done, and the "open source" approach is the way to do it to insure it's efficacy in all respects. There are thousands, maybe millions, of competent programmers out there, and programmers love to think of new ideas, find holes, etc. They love the challenge, and this system will keep them busy for some time. But, over time it will improve and settle in. It can use, for example, IBM's Watson to help voters identify candidates that match their interests.

And there has to be a "recall" or "no-confidence" feature, to let us boot out fakes and liars should they get into office.


Bill

Wednesday, March 5, 2014

Delsalinization

Here's another excellent article on the world's water problems:

Humanity Has Got to Come to Grips with the World's Fresh Water Crisis

I don't know why desalinization is never mentioned, but I think it's easy to see that it's the best long term solution in town.

The world is what, 80% water?

Sure, it's salt water, but that's by no means at all insurmountable. Look at Saudi Arabia and other places that use desalinization plants.

Yes, it would take a major project, but with our unemployment rate, don't you think that makes the idea even better? Wouldn't it be nice if a million people where involved in making desalinization happen? Sounds like win-win to me.

Bill

Thursday, January 9, 2014

IBM's Watson: a big question

You may have noticed the mention of IBM's Watson in today's Wall Street Journal. It looks/feels to me like IBM has big plans for Watson.

I have mixed feelings about it. It's existence (and future) touches on some really important issues, such as privacy, that will have to be sorted out.

But for the moment, assuming Watson is nothing more then a giant question answering machine, here's a big question it should be asked:

"Should Bush should be put on trial for the invasion of Iraq?"

The facts are available, millions of pieces of data exist, no doubt. There is so much information (and disinformation) that a human would need a lifetime to systematically and intelligently sort it all out and present a case one way or the other. Watson can do it in a few minutes, at most, and it could generate a log showing how it reasoned for people to study and decide.


Bill