Tom-Atlee’s posterous

It seems the there's a hot proposal in California to convene a constitutional convention in the form of a randomly selected citizen deliberative council -- and to make the ability to do that, as needed, part of the law of the State. This would be a profound step in the development of democracy. (See the New Yorker article "The States We're In" http://www.newyorker.com/talk/comment/2009/08/24/090824taco_talk_hertzberg )

This initiative has gotten some important endorsements and is rising in popularity and just might happen, given the rapid degradation of California's democracy and economy. If you'd like to find out more, or support it, or perhaps start an initiative of your own like this, check out their website http://www.repaircalifornia.org . Or try the quiet version of radical democratic reform -- Citizens Initiative Review -- being promoted by Healthy Democracy Oregon http://www.healthydemocracyoregon.org/about_CIR . Hopefully something like that will be in the new California constitution. If you live in California, write it in as a suggestion.

I just got off a conference call workshop in which the facilitator repeatedly maintained that "it all starts with the individual", in the sense that an individual has to do their own developmental and "get your life together" work in order to be in a state of awareness, health, and personal organization to be able to then contribute to work for the betterment of their community and world.

This individualistic assumption collided with my own sense that the individual is shaped by their social systems and circumstnaces, and that it is often important to start at the collective level -- creating support communities, conversational processes, technologies, etc., that facilitate personal development and positive individual contributions.

Of course, both are needed. Not separately, but together, because they feed on each other.

Whether we assume that "it all starts with the individual" or "the individual is shaped by their social systems and circumstances", we miss the extent to which individuals influence collective awareness, functionality and evolution AND collective systems influence individual consciousness, evolution and functioning. Individual and collective capacities and dynamics constitute a feedback cycle which doesn't START anywhere. Or perhaps I should more usefully say that this feedback cycle starts everywhere. (This is similar to it being more useful to talk about leaderful groups rather than leaderless groups. Both are true, but the framing invites different consciousness and behavior.) This realization about the feedback and synergy between the individual and collective opens our consciousness to strategies which maximize the evolution of BOTH.

Our challenge, then, might be stated as: How can we enhance and/or use individual capacities in ways that support healthy groups and societies SO THAT those enhanced groups and societies can then enhance and/or use their capacities to enhance individuals SO THAT those enhanced individuals can enhance their groups and societies and world, etc., etc., in an ongoing upward evolutionary spiral. Responses to this question could include such approaches as these:

* spiritual communities (sanghas) that enhance individual spiritual development, or communities of practice or inquiry that enhance individual capacity to learn and do work of a particular kind

* support groups that enhance individual behavioral change, such as decreasing carbon footprint (see David Gershon's LOW CARBON DIET for a superlative example)

* group supports for individual behaviors that enhance collective intelligence, such as those that are part of Open Space, World Cafe, and Appreciative Inquiry that, in turn, enhance individual awareness and behavior outside of the group, including extending those behaviors to other groups, including the convening (by prior participants) of such gatherings elsewhere...

* data displays, art, and stories that show people their place in and impact on the larger systems they're part of so they gain individual awareness derived from our collective capacities to fathom such systemic dynamics using computers, sensors, scientific research, crowdsourcing, etc. -- especially in ways that encourage those enhanced individuals to increase the ability of the collective to gather the information necessary for such collective understanding (by, for example, participating in crowdsourcing activities) that can further uplift individual systemic awareness which results in more collectively healthy behaviors by individuals...

* citizen deliberative councils (or other conversational practices inclusive of diverse voices) that through creative use of diversity end up manifesting a higher level of GROUP awareness and development than the average (and even sometimes highest) developmental awareness of its members. This phenomenon, when empowered, can create policies and social systems that raise the whole community's or society's FUNCTIONING to a manifest COLLECTIVE developmental meme-state far above the general individual citizen's, while constituting an attractor for the awareness of individual members of the community/society to expand... and those more aware individuals then become potential future members of such citizen deliberative councils, enabling those councils to rise even higher...

* creating and instituting economic indicators and "full cost accounting" protocols that internalize the full social and ecological costs of products and services into the prices of those products and services, so that the "free market" then produces socially and environmentally benign and healthy "invisible hand" collective outcomes. This involves individual behaviors which are shaped by the new regime of costs, so that people and companies pursuing their self-interest naturally end up serving the well-being of the whole, rather than destroying it, as so often happens with the current monetary/profit based protocols and prices.

Ultimately, we want a society where "Take responsiblity for what you love as an act of service" automatically serves the whole, partly through each person's PERSONAL awareness and attunement to "where my passion and gifts meet the world's needs" and partly because the social / economic / political systems, culture, technologies, communities people live in are DESIGNED so that life-serving efforts and outcomes happen naturally.

Social power is the ability of people and groups with wealth, position, notoriety, etc., to influence others. Social power enables those who hold it to gain more social power.

There are ample examples of this magnifying (or "positive feedback") dynamic: If you have lots of money, you can easily get more of it, or buy labor, or influence government. If you have an influential position, it is easier to get other influential positions, or to get money or other perks. If a group is well organized, and/or very large and/or very strategically wise, it can get lots of money or exert lots of influence on government or other groups.

Thanks to this power-magnifying feedback dynamic, concentrated power tends to grow, further concentrating social power. This fact leads many people to be justifiably wary of concentrated power, and to advocate decentralization. Decentralization is a valid and vital approach for many situations. But we still need to figure out how to deal with larger issues of the common good, including who cares for the oceans, counteracts oppression, or presides over the nonviolent resolution of conflicts among groups.

The development of democracy was significant, among other reasons, for the ways it institutionalized BALANCING feedback loops into governance (as detailed below). While permitting concentrated social power, it attempted to put healthy constraints on it and to channel it toward socially useful ends.

Democratic theory recognizes that concentrated governmental power - like other forms of concentrated energy such as electricity, fossil fuels, and explosives - can be a blessing or a curse. As a source of concentrated power, government can be used for great good, or it can be a locus for parasitic forces manipulating it for destructive ends or private benefit.

In the essay "Democracy: A Social Power Analysis" ( http://www.co-intelligence.org/CIPol_democSocPwrAnal.html ), John Atlee notes that concentrated social power is democratic to the extent that it is (a) answerable to those over whom it is exercised and (b) counter-balanced by other sources of social power. These two principles provides a forumula for making concentrated social power safe. They highlight the kind of feedback loops needed to maintain democracy.

BALANCE: Most modern democracies provide some of the needed balance through the dynamic tension between the three branches of government -- executive, legislative, and judicial -- each of which can influence, overrule, or bypass the others under certain circumstances. Further balance is provided by the existence of other centers of social power -- particularly the economic power of businesses and unions, and the informational power of journalism and other media.

ANSWERABILITY: Woven in and around all these is democracy's trademark way of making governance answerable: the popular vote.

As much as I love voting, it has never been the center of my work. I prefer to think of democracy as a potential source of tremendous collective wisdom for guiding our collective affairs - a vision described in my book THE TAO OF DEMOCRACY. Voting alone, as currently practiced, contributes little to this capacity for collective wisdom, which reaches beyond the original democratic search for a healthy way to deal with social power.

However, I am very aware that wise democracy has little chance of emerging unless there is at least some basic balance and answerability of social power. So a clean voting process is essential. Beyond that, some of the innovations I advocate - like the Citizen Initiative Review http://www.healthydemocracyoregon.org/about_CIR - are designed to bring more collective wisdom into the voting process itself.

This brings me to the main reason for this mailing:

..... The U.S. electoral system is in danger, once again.

According to several recent articles - "Senate Panel to Examine Sale of Diebold Voting Machine Division" http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2009/10/diebold-antitrust-2/ and "Your electronic vote in the 2010 election has just been bought" http://www.truthout.org/092509I - the largest voting machine company in the country, Election Systems and Software (ES&S), has just bought out its most infamous competitor - Diebold's e-voting division, Premier Election Solutions. This leaves ES&S in control of a significant majority of the voting machines (68%) and potential votes (about 80%) in the United States. This is an extraordinary concentration of power.

This is not, by far, the only problem with the U.S. electoral system, but it is one of the most dangerous and most readily addressed. It is dangerous because it increases the possibilities for direct and untraceable manipulation of the votes in the vast majority of states. Such election fraud is accomplished by electronically changing a voter's vote, adding imaginary voters, or tweaking the total tally, real possibilities demonstrated by, among others, scientists at Princeton and Stanford ( http://bit.ly/m4uXo ) . And in recent U.S. elections, there were some non-random, inexplicable and unprecedented divergences between exit polls and election results. (Exit polls are often used by international observers to monitor fair elections.)

Voting machine software is currently considered a proprietary business secret, so we don't actually know what happens when we cast our vote on one of the touch-screen machines or when our vote is counted by an optical scanning system. Few such systems provide for a verified printed ballot usable for recounts. (As a significant side-note: ES&S also created the voter registration systems for five states including California.)

This concentration of electoral functioning in one company's electronic systems invites and enables not only election manipulation but the potential to shut down the entire electoral process.

The aspect of this issue that is "most readily addressed" is the canceling of ES&S's purchase of Premier Election Solutions. As described in articles below, this is already being explored and can be supported by those of us watching this story unfold. Although Congressional and Justice Department remedies are apparently being pursued primarily out of antitrust concerns, my own motivation is to prevent the gross manipulation of the 2010 election.

In the long run, however, our efforts on this will only serve us to the extent we take further action to ensure the integrity of elections -- that we, the voters, generate enough collective power to balance the power of the voting machine companies and other special interests, and demand answerability, including through the use of paper ballots, whether or not electronic machines are used. Excellent ways to do this are described in the links below.

And the least we can do is spread the word on this new development and the larger issue of which it is a part. It is our job to make up for the fact that this is not getting the attention it deserves in the mainstream media. The power to make a difference awaits us in every moment of every day.

Coheartedly,
Tom

For further info on the sale, see
http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2009/09/diebold-sells

For in-depth material and help in taking action, see
http://www.blackboxvoting.org
http://www.votersunite.org
http://www.freepress.org
http://www.yesmagazine.org/fairelections

For the Co-Intelligence Institute's 2003 visionary, practical guidelines for electoral integrity and wisdom, see
http://co-intelligence.org/CIPol_ElectoralIntro.html
(broken links can, as usual, be pursued through the Internet Archive's WayBackMachine
http://www.archive.org/web/web.php )

For a humorous take on massive voting machine fraud, see

When you are standing on the edge of a cliff, a step forward is not progress.
-- Anonymous

Juliet Eilperin's 9/25/09 Washington Post article "New Analysis Brings Dire Forecast of 6.3-Degree Temperature Increase" http://bit.ly/6degreesWarmer describes UN-sponsored research into what will happen "by the end of the century even if the world's leaders fulfill their most ambitious climate pledges." It updates the 2007 report by the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) whose 2005 scientific foundations have been significantly transcended by more recent research which suggests climate change is progressing faster than the IPCC's worst-case scenarios. Grounded in new data on Arctic sea ice, glacial melting and movement, release of potent greenhouse gasses from the thawing tundra and undersea methane deposits, and other factors and feedback loops, this new analysis complements similar research done in the UK http://bit.ly/NewHotter .

Clearly some more intense efforts are called for. There is a major global climate summit coming up in Copenhagen in early December http://en.cop15.dk, where agreements will be made that will make or break our climate future. Before, during, and after that gathering, we all need to deepen our understanding of the shifting realities we face and our commitment to shifting them in more sustainable, wise directions.

Scientists are clearly doing their part in this, as are activists like 350.org and many artists and performers. I hope many more activists and artists will see how this issue connects to whatever issues they are working on. I hope journalists and academics will recognize the supremacy of this issue and sustain public and official attention on it, for the benefit of the whole society -- the whole world. I hope that dialogue and deliberation practitioners will ask themselves and each other, "What conversations can we convene or facilitate which would make the biggest difference in this issue, given our current skills and connections?" I hope systems thinkers will help more people understand how both climate change AND the various social forces that undermine our ability to address it are natural products of our current social systems -- especially our economics and politics. I hope they help us see what changes could shift those systems into less self-destructive forms.

Above and beyond these hopes I see a pattern, an evolutionary dynamic at work. Evolution demands that we be aligned with reality as it really is. When any organism gets out of alignment -- when it doesn't fit, when its ways don't work any more -- reality steps in to correct the dissonance. Organisms, ideas, governments, businesses and technologies die or go extinct while new ones arise that are more in alignment with What Is.

There are many ways to view civilization in this dynamic. One of them is that civilization is an exercise in making us invulnerable to the efforts of reality to limit or correct our behaviors, ideas, and systems. We don't let people die. We protect ourselves from weather and risk. We build bridges over rivers, cables under oceans, rockets through vast spaces. We create abstractions (like "powers of ten") that carry us far beyond what we can sense and thus respond to -- or religious, political, and scientific ideologies that deny whatever contradicts them, whatever lies outside them. We flush our "waste" "away" (although neither concept has any reality in natural systems). Whenever nature intervenes and says to us "Don't Do That!", we take that as a problem to be solved -- and measure our cleverness by our ability to keep doing that thing that got us in trouble. We rebuild on the flood plane. We fasten our seat belts. We buy more insurance. The higher or lower the temperature goes, the more we use our energy-intensive heating and air conditioning systems, emitting more CO2 into a climbing climate. We just don't stop.

We are geniuses at impacting the world while preventing impact on ourselves. As we solve our lives into greater and greater separation from the built-in learning mechanisms of evolution, nature has to stretch further and further to heal itself, to get us to pay attention, to stop treating feedback as a problem and see it as an increasingly urgent invitation -- indeed a demand -- to change. Yet still we go further and further out on the limb, brilliantly resisting nature's limits and messages.

Our separation from nature -- or should I say, our separation from reality as it really is, in all its fullness that is so hard for us to grasp -- has now reached global proportions. Reality's feedback is now coming in the form of increasingly extreme weather, emptying oceans and aquifers, cancers arising from an environmental chemical soup so complex we can no longer track the causal links any more, new diseases that won't respond to antibiotics and can span continents and seas in hours on jets, and small groups and networks with increasingly powerful destructive technologies at their disposal.

We are rapidly moving into a realm where problem-solving becomes obsolete, if not downright dangerous -- especially at the global level, especially when we are trying to preserve our systems, our habits, our identities, our protections and privileges. Because these challenges are not primarily problems to be solved. They are realities to engage with, to come to terms with, to learn something from about who we are in the world, to be humbled by and creatively joined. Yes, joined. Because inside the realities of today are profound lessons about who we need to be next, individually and collectively -- about the cultures, technologies, stories, and social systems we need to create and move into. We won't learn those lessons if we see these realities as merely problems to resist or resolve -- or worse, to make another war on. We need to see them as embodying the precise information we most desperately need to take in right now.

Six degrees of temperature rise. Six degrees of separation from each other. Six degrees of separation from reality. We need to find our way back, to find ways to be distinctly ourselves without losing our communion with the larger whole of Life. We need to creatively weave ourselves back into the feedback loops reality provides to keep the whole of Life healthy. We need to create newer forms, higher forms of answerability to reality -- to question the role of insurance, of "limited liability corporations", of entertainment, of cost-benefit analyses, of efficiency, of everything that protects us from being with what's real here and now, from the consequences of our actions and from awareness of our changing world -- indeed, from everything that helps us act as if we're separate.

Because we're not.

In my hometown of Eugene, Oregon, the City has chosen to explore the issues of climate change and energy challenges through the lens of six topics –

* Buildings and Energy
* Food and Agriculture
* Land Use and Transportation
* Consumption and Waste
* Health and Social Services
* Natural Resources

While I agree that this will probably be very productive, I want to note that these are static areas that will be effected by climate change and peak oil. I would also like to see us explore these issues using dynamic inquiries like

* What capacities do we have — or need to develop — to meet these challenges?
* What desirable possibilities could we realize while or through meeting these challenges?

I posted a essay on this for the City's project blog, exploring these -- including a discussion of capacities connected to social capital, process, democracy and systems thinking. See http://bit.ly/EugBlog1

Howard Silverman of Ecotrust referred me to an article "Can Science be 'Humanized'?" from Columbia Journalism Review http://bit.ly/KH8kf which is concerned with the struggle between science and the humanities in education and political life. The comments on the article are also instructive. I added my own comment, as follows, and invite others to add theirs. -- Tom

  
There is another approach to all this. An emerging movement sees science, itself - at least evolutionary science - as sacred and instructive. In its view of evolution, it encompasses cosmology, astrophysics, geology, physics, chemistry, biology, ecology, archaeology, anthropology, and even history, politics, sociology, and economics -- all of which cover different levels of evolving complexity in our 13.7 billion year journey to the point where we now are. It celebrates discoveries of this "deep time" evolutionary vista, its theories, its practices, the stories it paints of the world and who we are in it -- as sacred and instructive. See, for a paradigmatic example, Michael Dowd's THANK GOD FOR EVOLUTION http://thankgodforevolution.com which is endorsed by a number of Nobel scientists, among many others. Evolution is, after all, about energy and matter, about chaos and complex order, about survival and thrival, about self-interest and future generations, about change and sustainability. The dynamics through which evolution unfolds -- and it turns out there is at least as much cooperation as competition at work -- have much to tell us about our own survival and thrival, our own efforts to integrate the self-interest of individuals, groups, and corporate bodies with the common good. This is the core of ethics. Consider, too, the scientific fact that we are children of first-generation stars whose potent lives and explosive deaths produced every atom that built us and our world ("we are made of stardust") -- except for hydrogen, which precipitated out of the Big Bang, the most fundamental creative act of all time. There are ways to teach and do science that are deeply meaningful and morally useful without endangering in any way its precious objectivity, only its alienation. We need more science that is humanized and more humanities that are congruent with science. Prior to the 20th century we did not know enough to do this. Now we do. This is a marriage that could make all the difference in the world, quite literally.

A sociology student in France wrote to me, saying

I'm interested in the concept of "collective intelligence". When I referred to Wikipedia, it was explained like this: "the anti-globalization movement relies heavily on e-mail, cell phones, pagers, SMS, and other means of organizing before, during, and after events. One theorist involved in both political and theoretical activity, Tom Atlee, quantifies on a disciplined basis the connections between these events and the political imperatives that drive them." I'd like to know how Tom Atlee considers the anti-globalization movement.

Here's what I replied:
 
I have no idea what the Wikipedia writer is referring to. I don't do disciplined quantitative analysis -- quite the contrary. I do visionary qualitative analysis and integration.
 
In response to your question about globalization, I believe it is an inevitable evolutionary development that, because of the profit motive that drives it and how that combines with our limited perceptual capacities, breaks important feedback links between the actions we take (as individuals and collectives), our awareness of their impacts, and our motivation/ability to change our behavior appropriately. Global climate change is a perfect example of the combined effect of these things, both in reality and as a metaphor. Collectively, systemically, we have tremendous power and limited wisdom (wisdom being intelligence that arises from and addresses the "big picture").

Two approaches to addressing the problem of globalization are

(a) the full-cost accounting approach of "green economics", through which the social and environmental costs of economic activity (which are currently left out of GDP, profit calculations, etc.) are brought into our accounting procedures so that those costs become part of how we measure success and wealth of individuals, corporations, whole societies, etc. and

(b) using the increased globalization of interconnectivity, communication and collaboration to bring diverse interests, perspectives and resources to bear creatively on the challenges and opportunities we face as a global system. The methods for using such diversity creatively have been a major focus of my work, which has produced a transformational, evolutionary vision for the future of democracy: wise democracy. (I would love to see more of the global grassroots movement be about that...)
 
For my views on collective intelligence, I refer you to the section of my website on that subject

If you get a good sense of my work, I invite you to try rewriting the reference to it in Wikipedia.  You'll probably do better than whoever wrote the entry you read.  That would be an example of moving in the direction of increased collective intelligence (which Wikipedia, ideally, tries to manifest) ! :)

I wish you the best in your explorations.

Coheartedly,

Tom

I believe there is an emerging movement increasingly focused on the conscious evolution of social systems. It hasn't landed on a broadly agreeable name or identity, but I see a number of trends converging toward a common ground from fields as diverse as activism, evolutionary spirituality, organizational development, and systems thinking. For the moment I will call this a movement of social evolutionaries. Very definitely they are not social engineers inspired by social Darwinism. Rather, they are conscious of a broad spectrum of evolutionary dynamics more focused on cooperation than tooth-and-claw competition. They share a sense that we are all participating in a profoundly important evolutionary moment whose outcome depends on a radical shift in awareness and action that will largely determine the fate of humankind.
 
Clusters of us are in conversations to explore a series of inquiries we believe could help this emerging movement find greater coherence and self-awareness to help it have socially useful impact in a timely manner. These inquiries branch off of a core inquiry -- What would an intergenerational movement of social evolutionaries look like?. Among them are these:
 
 * What would such a movement focus on?
 * If we were to be such a movement, what would we need to know -- principles, models, tools, capacities...?
 * What tactics and means would we use?
 * How would we organize ourselves and expand, consistent with and serving the self-organizing dynamics of nature and the deep impulses of evolution?
 * What story would we be living?
 
Here are some of my own answers to these questions:
 
The emerging social evolutionary movement combines the social change spirit of past activist movements with the evolutionary understandings, inspirations, and motivations emerging from a sacred understanding of evolutionary science and integral studies.

* It sees todays challenges as compelling opportunities for evolutionary leaps of consciousness, culture and the structures, principles and processes that constitute social systems.

* Although it is informed by past political ideologies and agendas it takes its guidance primarily from the dynamics of evolution and natural systems and their analogues in the emerging dynamics of conscious social evolution. Its tactics include and transcend all previous movement activities and are, above all, grounded in collective learning and co-evolution. 

  * It finds meaning and inspiration in the ongoing cosmic, biological, and cultural unfolding of the 13.7 billion year evolutionary epic. Social evolutionaries see their work as a co-creative manifestation of an emerging evolutionary era whose greater conscious evolutionary intention and wisdom constitute a new chapter in this venerable evolutionary drama.
 
A Curriculum for Social Evolutionaries?
 
What are the most important maps and models needed by social evolutionaries? The following -- each of which could form the basis for weeks or months of dialogue, learning and practical application -- are examples that could be core to such a curriculum. Most can be found online.
 
Overall evolutionary models
* The Great Story / Epic of Evolution
* Peggy Holman's and Tom Atlee's Architecture of a Movement for Conscious Evolution
 
Political models:
* Bill Moyers MAP - Movement Action Plan
* Paul Ray's New Political Compass
* John Atlee's "Democracy: A social power analysis"
 
Models of evolutionary dynamics
* Peggy Holman's model of Emergence
* Don Beck's Spiral Dynamics
* Various models of Cosmogenesis (the creative dynamic that is the cosmos) - Communion, Differentiation, Interiority/Self-organization, Interaction, etc.
 
Domains of evolutionary work
* Ken Wilber's Quadrants and Lines
* Barbara Marx Hubbard's Wheel of Co-creation
* Ecotrust's Pattern Language for a Conservation Economy

A friend wrote me "What is the distinction for a general reader between a Citizen Jury and Deliberative Poll?"   Here's my answer:
 
A Citizens Jury is very analogous to a regular jury, but it is considering a public issue instead of the responsibility of someone in a criminal or civil court case. It usually has one or two dozen members selected at random. Its analogy to courtroom testimony is that it studies materials covering a range of views on the issue, and then gets testimony from diverse experts. It then deliberates and formulates recommendations for policymakers and/or the public. It usually lasts 3-5 days.
 
A Deliberative Poll, in contrast, is analogous to an opinion poll, but it involves some deliberation among the participants. Hundreds of randomly selected participants are invited to participate for one day. They get some briefing materials beforehand to discuss with friends and family, and then they deliberate together when they are brought together. They fill out a confidential questionnaire both before and after their deliberations to note any changes in issue-knowledge and opinion.

Recently James Fishkin, founder of deliberative polling, suggested that it could be used in place of current disruptive townhall meetings, with citizen deliberators meeting with their Congressperson for serious discussion at the end of the day.

Many people prefer deliberative polling because it is statisically more representative -- that is, closer to the high number of participants in public opinion polls.

From my perspective, however, the quality of deliberation tends to be higher with 12-24 people convened for 3-5 days (including cross-examining expert witnesses) than with hundreds of people for one day, thus I see a Citizens Jury as more able to generate collective intelligence/wisdom than a Deliberative Poll. A Citizens Jury is not focused on citizens changing their minds (the focus of the polling) as much as on coming to coherent group recommendations.

I see deliberative polling as a deliberative form of focus group (giving decision-makers a sense of how the public is thinking) and as a citizen education activity, whereas I see Citizens Juries (and other forms of citizen deliberative council as per ) as a deliberative act of direct wise democracy, where a citizen-based microcosm of the whole (community, society) is making decisions on behalf of the whole. Although usually those decisions are advisory, they can be (and occasionally are) directly empowered.
 
I hope from this you can extract the material you need for your purposes. 
 
Coheartedly,
Tom

Interesting conference entitled "We Demand Transparency" http://wedemandtransparency.com is being held in NYC on the anniversary of 9/11 to try bringing together the peace movement and the "truth" movement -- the movement originally formed to challenge the highly dubious official 9/11 narrative but expanded into many other areas in urgent need of transparency (including the Obama administration). The linkage between the two movements is thought-provoking: For example, the official 9/11 story and subsequent lies gave us the Iraq war, and Gandhi's nonviolence was framed as Truth Force. There is power in truth and transparency. Truth and transparency are also integral to collective intelligence. May these folks hold firm to real standards of truth and not suffer the fate of so many who doubt the powers-that-be, conjuring up more lies and imagined narratives to counter those of the dominant powers. It would be a fabulous service to us all.