I want to know what’s to stop this revolution from turning into a violent, destructive mess. Steele is characteristically optimistic. “I have struggled with this question. What I see happening is an end to national dictat and the emergence of bottom-up clarity, diversity, integrity, and sustainability. Individual towns across the USA are now nullifying federal and state regulations – for example gag laws on animal cruelty, blanket permissions for fracking. Those such as my colleague Parag Khanna that speak to a new era of city-states are correct in my view. Top down power has failed in a most spectacular manner, and bottom-up consensus power is emergent. ‘Not in my neighborhood’ is beginning to trump ‘Because I say so.’ The one unlimited resource we have on the planet is the human brain – the current strategy of 1% capitalism is failing because it is killing the Golden Goose at multiple levels. Unfortunately, the gap between those with money and power and those who actually know what they are talking about has grown catastrophic. The rich are surrounded by sycophants and pretenders whose continued employment demands that they not question the premises. As Larry Summers lectured Elizabeth Warren, ‘insiders do not criticize insiders.’”
– From the recent incredible Guardian article: The Open Source Revolution is Coming and it Will Conquer the 1% – ex CIA spy
This article that I am highlighting today is the most powerful and optimistic piece I have read in all of 2014. It also follows on perfectly from my post this past weekend, which I strongly suggest reading before continuing titled: Networks vs. Hierarchies: Which Will Win? Niall Furguson Weighs In.
Whereas Niall questions whether networks will ultimately prove able to topple hierarchies in the face of being co-opted by the status quo, Robert David Steele, like myself, has little doubt. More importantly, his opinion holds a lot more weight than mine. Mr. Steele is an incredibly impressive character. A former Marine, CIA case officer, and US co-founder of the US Marine Corps intelligence activity, he is also the number one Amazon reviewer for non-fiction across 98 categories. In his latest book, The Open-Source Everything Manifesto: Transparency, Truth and Trust, he lays out his optimistic, decentralized and open-sourced vision of the future.
Fortunately for us, he also recently sat down with Nafeez Ahmed for a Guardian article. My favorite excerpts are below:
Robert David Steele, former Marine, CIA case officer, and US co-founder of the US Marine Corps intelligence activity, is a man on a mission. But it’s a mission that frightens the US intelligence establishment to its core. With 18 years experience working across the US intelligence community, followed by 20 more years in commercial intelligence and training, Steele’s exemplary career has spanned almost all areas of both the clandestine world.
Widely recognised as the leader of the Open Source Intelligence (OSINT) paradigm, Steele went on to write the handbooks on OSINT for NATO, the US Defense Intelligence Agency and the U.S. Special Operations Forces. In passing, he personally trained 7,500 officers from over 66 countries.
In 1992, despite opposition from the CIA, he obtained Marine Corps permission to organise a landmark international conference on open source intelligence – the paradigm of deriving information to support policy decisions not through secret activities, but from open public sources available to all. The conference was such a success it brought in over 620 attendees from the intelligence world.
But the CIA wasn’t happy, and ensured that Steele was prohibited from running a second conference. The clash prompted him to resign from his position as second-ranking civilian in Marine Corps intelligence, and pursue the open source paradigm elsewhere. He went on to found and head up the Open Source Solutions Network Inc. and later the non-profit Earth Intelligence Network which runs the Public Intelligence Blog
I first came across Steele when I discovered his Amazon review of my third book, The War on Truth: 9/11, Disinformation and the Anatomy of Terrorism. A voracious reader, Steele is the number 1 Amazon reviewer for non-fiction across 98 categories.
Last month, Steele presented a startling paper at the Libtech conference in New York, sponsored by the Internet Society and Reclaim. Drawing on principles set out in his latest book, The Open-Source Everything Manifesto: Transparency, Truth and Trust, he told the audience that all the major preconditions for revolution – set out in his 1976 graduate thesis – were now present in the United States and Britain.
Steele’s book is a must-read, a powerful yet still pragmatic roadmap to a new civilisational paradigm that simultaneously offers a trenchant, unrelenting critique of the prevailing global order. His interdisciplinary ‘whole systems’ approach dramatically connects up the increasing corruption, inefficiency and unaccountability of the intelligence system and its political and financial masters with escalating inequalities and environmental crises. But he also offers a comprehensive vision of hope that activist networks like Reclaim are implementing today.
“We are at the end of a five-thousand-year-plus historical process during which human society grew in scale while it abandoned the early indigenous wisdom councils and communal decision-making,” he writes in The Open Source Everything Manifesto. “Power was centralised in the hands of increasingly specialized ‘elites’ and ‘experts’ who not only failed to achieve all they promised but used secrecy and the control of information to deceive the public into allowing them to retain power over community resources that they ultimately looted.”
Today’s capitalism, he argues, is inherently predatory and destructive:
“Over the course of the last centuries, the commons was fenced, and everything from agriculture to water was commoditised without regard to the true cost in non-renewable resources. Human beings, who had spent centuries evolving away from slavery, were re-commoditised by the Industrial Era.”
Open source everything, in this context, offers us the chance to build on what we’ve learned through industrialisation, to learn from our mistakes, and catalyze the re-opening of the commons, in the process breaking the grip of defunct power structures and enabling the possibility of prosperity for all.
“Sharing, not secrecy, is the means by which we realize such a lofty destiny as well as create infinite wealth. The wealth of networks, the wealth of knowledge, revolutionary wealth – all can create a nonzero win-win Earth that works for one hundred percent of humanity. This is the ‘utopia’ that Buckminster Fuller foresaw, now within our reach.”
This week, I had the good fortune of being able to touch base with Steele to dig deeper into his recent analysis of the future of US politics in the context of our accelerating environmental challenges. The first thing I asked him was where he sees things going over the next decade, given his holistic take.
“Properly educated people always appreciate holistic approaches to any challenge. This means that they understand both cause and effect, and intertwined complexities,” he said. “A major part of our problem in the public policy arena is the decline in intelligence with integrity among key politicians and staff at the same time that think tanks and universities and non-governmental organizations have also suffered a similar intellectual diminishment.
So why isn’t it happening yet?
“Preconditions are not the same as precipitants. We are waiting for our Tunisian fruit seller. The public will endure great repression, especially when most media outlets and schools are actively aiding the repressive meme of ‘you are helpless, this is the order of things.’ When we have a scandal so powerful that it cannot be ignored by the average Briton or American, we will have a revolution that overturns the corrupt political systems in both countries, and perhaps puts many banks out of business. Vaclav Havel calls this ‘The Power of the Powerless.’ One spark, one massive fire.”
“Our entire commercial, diplomatic, and informational systems are now cancerous. When trade treaties have secret sections – or are entirely secret – one can be certain the public is being screwed and the secrecy is an attempt to avoid accountability. Secrecy enables corruption. So also does an inattentive public enable corruption.”
So what exactly do you mean by open source everything? “We have over 5 billion human brains that are the one infinite resource available to us going forward. Crowd-sourcing and cognitive surplus are two terms of art for the changing power dynamic between those at the top that are ignorant and corrupt, and those across the bottom that are attentive and ethical. The open source ecology is made up of a wide range of opens – open farm technology, open source software, open hardware, open networks, open money, open small business technology, open patents – to name just a few. The key point is that they must all develop together, otherwise the existing system will isolate them into ineffectiveness. Open data is largely worthless unless you have open hardware and open software. Open government demands open cloud and open spectrum, or money will dominate feeds and speeds.”
On 1st May, Steele sent an open letter to US vice president Joe Biden requesting him to consider establishing an Open Source Agency that would transform the operation of the intelligence community, dramatically reduce costs, increasing oversight and accountability, while increasing access to the best possible information to support holistic policy-making. To date, he has received no response.
Given his standing as an intelligence expert, Steele’s criticisms of US intelligence excesses are beyond scathing – they are damning. “Most of what is produced through secret methods is not actually intelligence at all. It is simply secret information that is, most of the time, rather generic and therefore not actually very useful for making critical decisions at a government level. The National Security Agency (NSA) has not prevented any terrorist incidents.”
This is something I highlighted last year in my piece: NSA Chief Admits “Only One or Perhaps Two” Terror Plots Stopped by Spy Program.
His most intriguing premise is that the 1% are simply not as powerful as they, and we, assume them to be. “The collective buying power of the five billion poor is four times that of the one billion rich according to the late Harvard business thinker Prof C. K. Prahalad – open source everything is about the five billion poor coming together to reclaim their collective wealth and mobilise it to transform their lives. There is zero chance of the revolution being put down. Public agency is emergent, and the ability of the public to literally put any bank or corporation out of business overnight is looming. To paraphrase Abe Lincoln, you cannot screw all of the people all of the time. We’re there. All we lack is a major precipitant – our Tunisian fruit seller. When it happens the revolution will be deep and lasting.”
I want to know what’s to stop this revolution from turning into a violent, destructive mess. Steele is characteristically optimistic. “I have struggled with this question. What I see happening is an end to national dictat and the emergence of bottom-up clarity, diversity, integrity, and sustainability. Individual towns across the USA are now nullifying federal and state regulations – for example gag laws on animal cruelty, blanket permissions for fracking. Those such as my colleague Parag Khanna that speak to a new era of city-states are correct in my view. Top down power has failed in a most spectacular manner, and bottom-up consensus power is emergent. ‘Not in my neighborhood’ is beginning to trump ‘Because I say so.’ The one unlimited resource we have on the planet is the human brain – the current strategy of 1% capitalism is failing because it is killing the Golden Goose at multiple levels. Unfortunately, the gap between those with money and power and those who actually know what they are talking about has grown catastrophic. The rich are surrounded by sycophants and pretenders whose continued employment demands that they not question the premises. As Larry Summers lectured Elizabeth Warren, ‘insiders do not criticize insiders.’”
So how does open source everything have the potential to ‘re-engineer the Earth’? For me, this is the most important question, and Steele’s answer is inspiring. “Open Source Everything overturns top-down ‘because I say so at the point of a gun’ power. Open Source Everything makes truth rather than violence the currency of power. Open Source Everything demands that true cost economics and the indigenous concept of ‘seventh generation thinking’ – how will this affect society 200 years ahead – become central. Most of our problems today can be traced to the ascendance of unilateral militarism, virtual colonialism, and predatory capitalism, all based on force and lies and encroachment on the commons. The national security state works for the City of London and Wall Street – both are about to be toppled by a combination of Eastern alternative banking and alternative international development capabilities, and individuals who recognise that they have the power to pull their money out of the banks and not buy the consumer goods that subsidise corruption and the concentration of wealth. The opportunity to take back the commons for the benefit of humanity as a whole is open – here and now.”
Wow.
Full article here.
In Liberty,
Michael Krieger
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Imagine a world where cities were able to create their own cell phones, televisions, radios, weapons for defense and everything else on site and for their own people. Forget the iphone, et al, that was basically made for pennies in SE Asia in a sweatshop. We need this open source revolution. Forget these huge multinational corps who sends the jobs overseas where people will do them for a helluva lot less. Forget not being able to make a living on one job. Keep our resources in place, in circulation in our own community. Kinda like the lifeblood of a body, right now it’s going to one place, and it’s getting stuck there, to the oligarchy. Just like an aneurysm in the body, when it finally bursts, and it will, it will kill the host, in this case this planned obsolescence, “capitalistic”, which is really an oligarchic, system.
visit The Venus Project by Jacque Fresco
Michael, I hope you’re following the open sourced “free energy” Tesla generator that is in development mode right now. If you’re not, definitely keep your eyes on it. My gut tells me that this is the real deal. Finally a generator that can power more than your house and can be built in your own garage with a little know how. It doesn’t get much more destabilizing to the power structure than what that bit of sovereignty can create. http://hopegirl2012.wordpress.com/
hey mike, i’m glad you checked out steele. i sense you probably have been familiar with him before my comment.
and whether or not my comment was read by you, coincidence or not, makes no difference.
anyways check out my site v3p.tv
i’m thinking of starting yet one more ‘alternative’ news source. My goal is to try and create a larry king live type show for striving 3rd party candidates and for interviewing local and state government employees, also, i plan on doing livestreaming REAL TIME interviews of candidates, like a live radio disc jockey show but with video streamed from the streets using 4g connections.
all i have is william banzai’s contributed image on the front page so far….could use some help or advice if you know anyone interested in starting a media channel.
Well, now you done made me go and buy the book.
Steele may well be right about the conditions of revolution. Problem is, the situation is not developing in a vacuum. Powers-that-be will recognize the potential – and the threat – that a connected population offer, and will “flip the switch” one minute after our first self-immolation in the marketplace. There is no way in hell they will allow this connectedness to evolve organically.
Who holds the kill switch rules the world. Vannevar Bush conceived the “Interweb” as a world wide control matrix for a crime-less, cashless, careless society where everyone was overseen by a Big Brother – the words net and web are axiomatic with spiders, specifically Black Widow spiders. Google image search “Spirit of Zion”. These folk give us real Jews a bad name…
BTW, Spiders predated Lizards by a long, long way…lol…but lizards eat spiders…and those “Jewish” among you will doubtless know what the word kowach means in Hebrew, yes Michael?
As for a revolution, the only revolution that is going to happen is when Mankind revolts against lovelessness and does away with usury and debt, until that time it will pretty much be business as usual, with the Communism vs Fascism Punch and Judy show center stage. You can even make money writing books to put your pint of view…(sic)…but it all ends in an amber cascade…
Once upon a time, the mob had the munitions, the moxy and the means to topple the aristocracy, but now the El-ites have the power to punish – drones are one thing, hellfire missiles another, but the tour de force will be fire from the heavens, as in space based laser, Revolution? Don;t make me laugh…it hurts my hernia…
Besides, mobs don’t think, they are led like lambs to the slaughter – every time I see a mob I think of goats and sheep…baaaahhh…if your leader is not your own God given conscience, you are screwed, as in “Meet the new boss, same as the old boss – won’t get fooled again? Yeah, right…pass me a cold beer…
As Margaret Bowes Lyon said, we do not need the mobs anymore, all we need is our people and our technicians and scientists, human labour is no longer necessary. The DUMMIES who think that the El-ites and their acolytes actually give a rats ass about the masses and their money need to do a big rethink. As long as you keep dickering about change being possible, they are pulling the rug from under your feet – they don’t want the money system to last 5 minutes more than they need it to. The only good these “books” will do is to provide fuel and food during the Greatest Depression that the world will ever see.
Bottom line this is about three things, ye even four. The destruction of Israel, of Christianity, and of all the useless eaters, and the offering of creation back to their god, even if it is in sacrifice – after all why do you think they want all those bombs? OR as J Robert Oppenheimer said, “Now I am become death, the destroyer of worlds.” And who is that “guards” the Cern project? None other than Shiva, the destroyer.
“The weapons of our warfare are not of the flesh, but are mighty through God to the pulling down of strongholds…”
“The current strategy of 1% capitalism is failing because it is killing the Golden Goose at multiple levels.”
What we are experiencing and have been for some time now is NOT capitalism.
The MFMP has been openly testing claims of radical new energy technology here
http://www.quantumheat.org
and it has just been nominated for this years Nobel peace prize for its “Live Open Science” approach.
The world is changing and we can all take part.
thethrivemovement.com
Is Robert David Steele, former Marine, CIA one of those that ran the equivalent of the ruling bodies intelligence gathering pedophiles mind-control program?
I love this view. It’s amazing how many people don’t realize what is really happening…even domestically. There are guys like former CIA and Blackwater guys that are just working domestically now….like this guy out west I know. I actually connected with him for the first time while he was running some kind of operation in Prague…. He never said what he did, but I figured it out because he was always doing stuff from multiple apartments, phones, computers around the city. Ben was his name I think. And he was a berg something like Gochberg or Gotchberg. Anyway…. it’s really interesting to note how open source stuff is even changing within the intelligence community.
Loved reading this article. Any suggestions re governance have great fascination for me. I am one who understands that the massing of people everywhere brings chaos to all the old institutions since most are built on some kind of democratic exchange, if only to fill the hall or temple. With so many speaking in even more tongues than ever before, the babel type of confusion is engendered and what emerges means nothing to the intelligent but is used by the crafty and sly to rule. since they give the nod to the more numerous and loud groups than to common sense ones.
Of course, the key to good governing is the return to communities of people who share the same directions, have the same needs for living,… smaller groups who can focus on what is important and what is not..The immediate need is always to get the job done without so much so called exploration which is really procrastination that kills all product and progress.The key to progress is to set in place something to solve the problem, get things working again and then refine the solution, not postpone it until theoretical perfection has been achieved!
Thiel appears to understand this but his problem and mine is how do you derail the ultra centralization now in place, still building senseless gigantism, to return to reason.to allow people to work and plan for their accepted goals.in smaller groups which can dedicate daily to their objectives.. Diversity has sold itself to so many and none realize that in such a Tower of Babel there is no chance for progress in the midst of such confusing messages of I want mine, No I want mine!
We are stagnating now and very soon that will become decay. It will not be recognized until violence begins because those who will not help themselves will rail at those who do and then murder and mayhem finishes all.That was the lesson in all the Watts and Fergusons we have witnessed for so long. It can spread to whole continents as it has in Africa and South America and now even in Asia as india disintegrates further under it. The Pakistanis began it but Islam will finish it!
I think the opportunity is at hand. However it will need to come by blood. People in power never give it up. It’s not in them to do so. Human nature I believe says to them, keep the power and defend it and keep trying no matter what. Kings always had to be slain to remove them from power. The public is growing sick of the same old song and dance, as the saying goes, but the public also seems to have a very tolerant streak for going along with the bs as long as they are not hurting to bad. This control will probably continue until the people being taxed simply can’t keep up with the people getting help from the system. So far they have maintained it by printing fake money. When that powder keg explodes it might be the straw that breaks the camels back.
As far as I can see, the Hegelian Dialectic is alive and well, and thriving worldwide. Open Source communication will grow until the ‘gatekeepers’ decide to shut it down, which they are already positioning to do.
The Unseen Hand wants to return to a time when the ‘individual’ was subservient to the collective, pre-Reformation. The vatican has a lot of investment in this retro-movement.
The worldwide middle-class is being marginalized and squeezed back to the ‘working poor’, i.e. ‘serfdom’.