Wednesday, July 4, 2007

Thomas Barnett's Brave New World

Thomas Barnett articulates a vision that I think is at the heart of 9/11. That's not to say he was involved, though if I were prosecuting the case I would have questions for him.

Here's Dr. Barnett speaking at a Technology Entertainment and Design (TED) conference:

http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/view/id/33

He's an engaging speaker with interesting ideas, so whatever you think about 9/11, you'll benefit from the speech. Please watch this before reading.

These TED conferences are full of the types of "revolutionaries" you see hailed in Wired magazine.

Wikipedia

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Barnett

Home Page

http://www.thomaspmbarnett.com/index.htm

NewRulesSet.Project

Project Summary

http://www.thomaspmbarnett.com/projects/newrulesset/NewRuleSets_Project%20Summary%20Page.htm

Project Summary Brief Slide Show

http://www.thomaspmbarnett.com/projects/newrulesset/NRS%20Project%20Summary%20Brief.htm

Globalization Gets a Bodyguard, November 2001

http://www.thomaspmbarnett.com/published/bodyguardl.htm

And Dr. Barnett's brave new world, where the Department of Defense is split into two components:

http://www.thomaspmbarnett.com/published/ladod.htm


The result? DoD will be broken into two separate organizations:

The Department of Global Deterrence (DGD), to focus on preventing and, if necessary, fighting large-scale conventional and/or weapons-of-mass-destruction-enhanced warfare among nation-states

The Department of Network Security (DNS), to focus on maintaining the United States' vast electronic and commercial connectivity with the outside world, including protection and large-scale emergency reconstitution of the Evernet, and to perform all the standard crisis-response activity short of war (with a ballooning portfolio in medical).


The Department of Network Security will, it seems, have agents throughout the economy:

DNS will discard the traditional notion of military service separate from civilian life. For most personnel, it will adopt a consultancy model, whereby the agency rents career time versus buying entire lifetimes (essentially the National Guard model). DNS's officer corps will remain career managers, but with frequent real-world tours of duty in technology, industrial, and business fields. This organization will be networked in the extreme, because networks will be what it is all about. This means no separate legal system and the end to posse comitatus restrictions.

No separate legal system?

The end of posse comitatus?

I wish he would elaborate on these, since it sounds like the worst fears of the black-helicopter crowd.

I also wonder if real-world tours will include the field of mass media.

That's already happened:

http://www.counterpunch.org/cnnpsyops.html

Barnett elaborates on his idea of a Department of Network Security, System Administrator force in his TED speech, and in the Wall Street Journal article linked below.

During the above slide show, Barnett asked in 2000 whether there would be new stresses that lead to the New Rule Set:



Here's what he said about 9/11:

http://www.thomaspmbarnett.com/published/git.htm

Perhaps I'm reading too much into this:

First, we need to expand dramatically the dialogue between Wall Street and the Pentagon regarding how globalization changes our definitions of national security. Over the past several years, the Naval War College has collaborated with the broker-dealer firm Cantor Fitzgerald in conducting a series of Economic Security Exercises examining scenarios such as a terrorist strike against Wall Street, the Year 2000 Problem, and Asia’s future energy needs.

These pioneering war games are the brainchild of retired Navy Admiral William J. Flanagan, Senior Managing Director of Cantor Fitzgerald, which until 11 September had its international headquarters in the uppermost floors of the World Trade Center. It is not hyperbole to call the September terrorist strike a new form of warfare. Cantor Fitzgerald’s catastrophic human loss only underscored the paradigm shift. These individuals were killed not only to terrorize the American people, but also to disable U.S. financial markets and, by doing so, diminish global investor confidence in their long-term stability.


I agree that the individuals were killed to terrorize the American people, but the U.S. financial markets were reopened quickly, even at the cost of the health and slowly the lives of the policemen and firemen that were lied to about air quality. (These are the real heroes whose heroism is not in the least diminished by what I am saying about 9/11, because they worked to save innocent lives and give their fallen brothers and sisters the honor of a decent burial. Most of them hold faux-hero Giuliani in contempt.) And globalization was extended by 9/11, regaining ground lost by mild setbacks in Seattle and Genoa that struggled for an alternative, decentralized vision of the future.

Dr. Barnett called 9/11 the "first live-broadcast, mass snuff film in human history."

http://www.thomaspmbarnett.com/published/wsj.htm

This is an accurate, if callous, statement, and is probably just a cheap way to shock people at one of his lectures. I won't say, as some have, that this shows complicity in 9/11. All I am saying about Barnett is that he articulates a vision that led to and has been furthered by 9/11.

The callousness of the statement might also reflect the mentality of those willing to make the "tough decisions," which is the type of utilitarian argument I could see made by those who implemented 9/11, those who lied about air quality, those who lied about Iraq, Al Qaeda and WMD, and so on. Madeline Albright reflected this "gravitas" when she said that the deaths of hundreds of thousands of Iraqis from sanctions was "worth it." I say it's Dr. Strangelove madness, and would like to see the perpetrators of 9/11 make this argument at the death penalty phase of their war crimes trials.

Again, I'm not saying Barnett was involved in 9/11. It's the mentality, not the man, I'm speaking about. Barnett exemplifies that mentality, which in addition to his intelligence, knowledge, and charisma, is what makes him the hot consultant that he is. In his TED speech, he argues that his system administrators will cure the ills of the world, like genocide in the Sudan, so I can't say the man does not genuinely believe that the world needs elite "System Administrators," rather than feckless UN bureaucrats, to ease human suffering.

The Project for a New Century called for the same goals of global domination and military transformation, the latter of which is called the "Revolution in Military Affairs":

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Revolution_in_Military_Affairs

http://www.comw.org/rma/fulltext/second.html

Barnett is referenced at both of the above websites.

In 2000, PNAC said that the military transformation would require a catalytic event, a "New Pearl Harbor":

http://www.newamericancentury.org/RebuildingAmericasDefenses.pdf

(page 63 of 90)

9/11 was that catalytic event.

It is the Fourth of July, so I will say that all of this is exactly what I was taught the Founding Fathers fought against.

I am done with this blog for the time being. I could flesh out my arguments about the 9/11 media/military mind war in my Summary of Arguments, but I have made my point. Others developed these understandings and will continue developing them at
9/11 Researchers.com, particularly "Fred."

http://www.911researchers.com/blog/12

I'm also done for now with fighting the so-called "9/11 Truth Movement," which is just pushing lies and diversion, whether by focusing on Bush/Cheney and a "stand down," supposed Pakistani funding of the Arab patsies, assuming they even exist, or on Zionists and remote controlled planes. All these are either wrong or peripheral to the real story, no planes and faked broadcasts. Also, I don't care how the Twin Towers were rapidly pulverized, whether by explosives, 4th-generation nukes, directed energy weapons, or whatever. They were rapidly pulverized, and did not "collapse." If I'm a prosecutor, that's all I need to know to start a real investigation. If I'm a perpetrator, I'm happy for people to endlessly speculate about what I used to pulverize the towers.

9/11 was of the global corporations, by the global corporations, and for the global corporations. Davos Man v. Seattle Man, as Barnett says in his slide show.

This Seattle man wants nothing to do with it. I am no longer deceived by their televised lies. I'm not a servo-mechanism of their institutional order, as law professor Butler Shaffer says. Ultimately, that's all that counts--my mind is free.

http://www.lewrockwell.com/shaffer/shaffer144.html

There is far too much at stake in our world for any of us to take comfort in our institutionally-certified ignorance by pulling the blankets up over our heads so that we not see the bogeyman.

But there is another factor – what I call “existential courage” – that must remain at the forefront of our efforts to live as human beings, rather than as servo-mechanisms to the institutional order. What kind of people are we that we should lay our liberties, property, and lives – including the lives of our children – at the feet of rulers, to be disposed of in any manner that suits their momentary temperaments? What have we become that we regard any questioning of this arrangement as the products of “irresponsible” or “paranoid” minds? Why should free and energized minds be fearful of asking any questions, particularly those we have been told it is improper to ask?


The American Revolution lives in your mind, or it doesn't. That's your choice.

Dwight Van Winkle

Monday, July 2, 2007

This is rich

Democratic House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said Bush's decision to commute Scooter Libbey's prison sentence showed the president "condones criminal conduct."

http://www.prnewswire.com/cgi-bin/stories.pl?ACCT=104&STORY=/www/story/07-02-2007/0004619555&EDATE=

It is Pelosi and the Congress that are condoning criminal conduct.

From Daily Kos:

Pelosi on Impeachment and Defending the Constitution: It's Just Not Worth It
by dlindorff
Mon Jul 02, 2007 at 08:46:44 AM PDT

Two bloggers get Pelosi to admit to her pinched and self-serving view of the Democrats' role in the 110th Congress.
dlindorff's diary :: ::

By Dave Lindorff

In a fascinating article published in NewsMax yesterday, online journalists Mike Stark and Dave Johnson report that in a conversation they had with speaker Nancy Pelosi, the speaker told them she had decided "at least a year ago," before Democrats had even taken control of the House and Senate, "that impeachment was something that we could not be successful with, and that would take up the time we needed to do some positive things to establish a record of our priorities and [Republican] short-comings."

She reportedly added, "The President isn’t worth it...he’s not worth impeaching. We’ve got important work to do."

Stark says he replied, "Respectfully, the question is whether or not the Constitution is worth it," to which he says Pelosi responded, "Well, yeah, the constitution is worth it if you can succeed."

. . .

The whole point of impeachment hearings is to investigate and make the case for impeachment. Until that is done, it is simply nonsense to say the process "could not be successful."

More here:

http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2007/7/2/113025/1828

It turns out NewsMax misstated the bloggers' blogs, but the Pelosi quotes are accurate.

The correct information on the bloggers, and their full interview of Pelosi, are here:

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2007/6/30/05731/7541

In this interview, Pelosi recognizes there are grounds for impeachment, but states that the question of whether these crimes should be condoned is separate:

"But we are in disagreement – I’m not going to try to budge you on that – on whether the President should have been impeached. That’s a different question from 'Are there grounds for impeachment?' But should he have been impeached?"

More Democratic posturing here:

http://www.usatoday.com/news/washington/2007-07-02-libby-reaction_N.htm

But John Edwards got most of it:

"In George Bush's America, it is apparently OK to misuse intelligence for political gain, mislead prosecutors and lie to the FBI."

http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,20867,22009243-601,00.html



None of the Democrats made explicit that by doing this, Bush is protecting Rove, Cheney, and/or himself.

Senate Democratic majority leader Harry Reid got close:

"The President's decision to commute Mr Libby's sentence is disgraceful," Mr Reid said.

"Libby's conviction was the one faint glimmer of accountability for White House efforts to manipulate intelligence and silence critics of the Iraq war.

"Now, even that small bit of justice has been undone," Mr Reid said in a statement.

"The Constitution gives President Bush the power to commute sentences, but history will judge him harshly for using that power to benefit his own Vice-President's chief of staff who was convicted of such a serious violation of law.