June 21 2014: I love to blog (daily if remotely possible)—so if don’t blog for a while, you can safely assume I’m ill—or that the distraction is major. For the last couple of months, I have been recovering—more slowly than I would like—from an accident. It’s been a damn nuisance—but it could have been a whole lot worse.

I think every family is dysfunctional, and some manage to control it better than others.

Viggo Mortensen

 

Dysfunctional families have sired a number of pretty good actors.

Gene Hackman

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The photo is that of my much loved stepfather, Alfred Lyons.

I was about eight when he and my mother were married. I took to him immediately, insisted on calling him “Daddy,” pretty much banned the word “step” from family usage—and hoped for the best.

At the time, my relationship with my mother was contentious—to put it mildly—because, apart from having a short fuse and a violent temperament, she had absolutely no idea how to bring up a boy. She, herself, had been brought up—until her mid teens—as an only child by French governesses—and her solution to any and all problems with me (real or imagined) was to lash out both verbally and physically. She compounded that behavior by sending me to boarding school at the age of five—and parking me with my grandmother during the summer and with a pair of aunts during the Easter vacation. In fact, I was only at home during the Christmas vacation—during which I largely occupied myself. I had rebelled against my mother’s beatings when I was five and refused to kiss her—and maintained that posture pretty much until I left home.

It was relatively easy not to encounter my mother even when were living under the same roof. The large house was divided into her quarters—her bedroom, her drawing room, and the dining-room (a study was added later), and we children were largely confined to the servants’ quarters, our own rooms, and the large garden. She virtually never went into the garden.  That was the gardener’s territory, and she was not—in the main—an outdoors person.

In fact, the only room we overlapped in was the kitchen, where my mother would go for coffee (if it wasn’t brought to her). We children ate there with the servants. Eventually, my mother amended the rules to allow children to eat with her after we were twelve—but that was to come later. In fact, given that the younger kids were under twelve when I left home, I don’t think we ever ate together as a complete family. I was the eldest of 12 children.

I thought nothing of it at the time. Having the children looked after by the servants was common practice amongst the Anglo-Irish in those days. Now, I just shake my head in wonder.

Alfred eased the emotional climate at home during a crucial time in my life—and I owe him a complete deal. He was an exceptional man—intelligent, witty, widely read, creative, the best of company—and extremely kind to me. Yet, given my mother’s destructive nature, the relationship with my mother was doomed from the beginning and—in the end—she killed him (albeit indirectly).

I was devastated when I heard Alfred had died. I felt nothing but a vast relief when I was told my mother was dead. I still feel much the same way.

They say you only need one person to love you to evolve from childhood in a reasonably balanced way (insofar as humans are ever balanced). In my case, Alfred was of the most enormous help, but my real emotional rock was my high-minded grandmother.

My childhood was difficult in the extreme—and I was, indeed, the victim of much violence and other abuse—but I did receive an excellent education for someone destined for the creative world, so, on balance—I feel pretty damn lucky.

As for the many unpleasant episodes, well—as we writers say—it’s all material.

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June 20 2014: Americans tend not to be introspective. We’re too busy working, consuming, and being entertained to question. Perhaps we should re-think that—because our confidence in the institutions that underpin the American Way of Life sucks. Could it be that the time has come for some fresh thinking? Or are we so conditioned that we are no longer capable of coming up with fresh answers?

“One should never trust a woman who tells one her real age. A woman who would tell one that would tell one anything.”

Oscar Wilde

“In the end, you have to choose whether or not to trust someone.”

Sophie Kinsella, Shopaholic & Baby

“I'm not upset that you lied to me, I'm upset that from now on I can't believe you.”

Friedrich Nietzsche

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U.S. Confidence in Institutions—a massive and systemic breakdown in trust

June 19 2014: Infantry combat: How do you kill an enemy who is within rifle range, out of hand-grenade range, but not within your line-of-sight? And, you have no mortars, artillery on call, or air support.

“Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed. This world in arms is not spending money alone. It is spending the sweat of its laborers, the genius of its scientists, the hopes of its children. This is not a way of life at all in any true sense. Under the clouds of war, it is humanity hanging on a cross of iron.”

Dwight D. Eisenhower

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Do you wake up and obsess about such issues? Probably not. However, if you were patrolling in Iraq or Afghanistan (pick your trouble-spot) it would be a matter of some concern.

Hostiles, when not blowing you up or shooting at you, like to take cover—to duck down behind walls, rocks, and anything which will hide them, and, ideally, stop a bullet as well—and, over time, become very good at it. This is Darwinianism in action—on the job training. The lesser competent get killed relatively quickly.

For something like 20 years—a truly ridiculous amount of time (and a disgrace given the manifest need) the Army have had a solution in development. This is the XM25, a 14lb boxy sort of weapon, which “features a target acquisition system that calculates the target range with a push of a button, and transfers the data to the electronic fuse built into the 25mm round. When fired, the projectile is designed to explode directly above targets out to 600 meters, peppering enemy fighters with shrapnel.”

The cost for the XM25 and the rounds it fires is expensive today, because the weapons and ammunition are being manufactured by hand. But with development of automated production facilities, the Army say the price is expected to come down to about $35,000 for the weapon and fire control system, and about $55 per round.

By all accounts, the XM25 is effective, but the Rangers, in particular, have been severely critical of it.

After an initial assessment, Ranger units found the XM25 too heavy and cumbersome for the battlefield. They were also concerned that the limited basic load of 25mm rounds was not enough to justify taking an M4A1 carbine out of the mission, sources say.

XM25 is an offshoot of the Objective Individual Combat Weapon program the Army began in the mid-1990s to increase firepower effectiveness. It was then known as the XM29 — an over-and-under system with a 5.56mm carbine on the bottom and the 20mm airburst weapon on top. The OICW program stalled in the face of technical challenges that made the 18-pound weapon too heavy and bulky. The program ended up costing about $100 million.

Read more: http://defensetech.org/2013/08/15/army-to-rename-xm25-airburst-weapon/#ixzz35V9QGENB
Defense.org

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June 18 2014: It would make a great deal of sense for writers to dance—but would it make as much sense for dancers to write?

“And hand in hand, on the edge of the sand,
They danced by the light of the moon.”

Edward Lear, The Owl and the Pussycat

“Somebody just gave me a shower radio. Thanks a lot. Do you really want music in the shower? I guess there's no better place to dance than a slick surface next to a glass door.”

Jerry Seinfeld

“Nobody cares if you can't dance well. Just get up and dance. Great dancers are great because of their passion.”

Martha Graham

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Hard to believe it has been over 20 years since Riverdance erupted on the scene. The date was April 30 1994 and the occasion was the Eurovision Song contest.

The Riverdance segment lasted seven minutes and was a life changing event, as far as I was concerned. It signified the poverty-stricken chip-on-the-shoulder Ireland I had grown up in having evolved into “The Celtic Tiger.”

That particular tiger turned out to have a penchant for economic self destruction, but the consequences of that pattern of behavior were still well over a decade away in 1994—and Ireland, at last, felt confident and dynamic—and showed it.

I was thrilled. I had played a part in that economic progression—at considerable personal cost, as it happens—but Riverdance gave me the feeling it had all been worth it.

It was absolutely compelling—and one of the sexiest things I had ever seen. Still is.

Do I think dancers should write? That might be difficult given the extraordinary demands in terms of time and focus that dancing to a certain standard makes—but are the demands made of a writer who seeks excellence any the less? I think not.

That said, I think it is a great pity that—particularly where creativity is concerned—we don’t cross the barriers more.

Worth reflecting upon.

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June 17 2014: Congratulations! One of my sister Lucy’s drop-dead gorgeous daughters, Faith, has become engaged. Where else to do it but the waters off Istanbul. Her fiancée—that pleasant-looking fellow—is Tom Isaac.

 

“A fool in love makes no sense to me. I only think you are a fool if you do not love.”

-Unknown

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Apparently, this actually happened on June 17 2014—so I’m posting it on that date.

Good family news is a fine thing.

June 16 2014: “Who guards the guardians?” (One of may favorite questions). Well, where the media are concerned, you could make a good case for the UK’s THE GUARDIAN newspaper. It’s doing great work these days. It’s article on Open Source Intelligence guru, Robert David Steele, is an example of just that.

You only have power over people so long as you don't take everything away from them. But when you've robbed a man of everything, he's no longer in your power - he's free again.

Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

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ROBERT DAVID STEELE

I consider it fundamental to my role as a writer to keep myself well informed—and I devote considerable time, energy, and resources to so doing. Though I have a wide range of contacts, I rely heavily on open sources. I have found from experience that although open sources may not tell me everything I need to know directly, I can normally deduce what I need to know by connecting the dots—and drawing on my own experience. This is particularly the case where the economy is concerned. In fact, here I could make the case that open sources are more reliable than official sources.

The U.S. has serious problems at present and is currently in decline—and fairly rapid decline at that. That said, the answers to most of our problems are out there, and would be relatively easy to master and implement if we were prepared to swallow our pride and learn from others.

Mostly, we don’t seem willing to do so. Why not? An important reason is that the status quo suits the Ultra Rich just fine—and they have the tools to manipulate our degrees of concern and fan the flames of the ideology we have been conditioned to believe in.

ROBERT DAVID STEELE is the guru of open source intelligence, a truly fascinating man, and you can read the full Guardian article on him by clicking on the link. I would urge you to do so. What he has to say is important. The following is an extract. Best to read the full thing.

The open source revolution is coming and it will conquer the 1% - ex CIA spy

• June 19, 2014
• 13 min read
• original

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.

Steele started off as a Marine Corps infantry and intelligence officer. After four years on active duty, he joined the CIA for about a decade before co-founding the Marine Corps Intelligence Activity, where he was deputy director. Widely recognized 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 organize 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.

Former CIA spy and Open Source Intelligence pioneer, Robert David Steele speaking at the Inter-American Defense Board in 2013

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. He also reviewed my latest book, A User's Guide to the Crisis of Civilization, but told me I'd overlooked an important early work – 'A More Secure World: Our Shared Responsibility, Report of the UN High-Level Panel on Threats, Challenges, and Change.'

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 specialised '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 commoditized without regard to the true cost in non-renewable resources. Human beings, who had spent centuries evolving away from slavery, were re-commoditized by the Industrial Era."

Open source everything, in this context, offers us the chance to build on what we've learned through industrialization, 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."

The goal, he concludes, is to reject:

"... concentrated illicitly aggregated and largely phantom wealth in favor of community wealth defined by community knowledge, community sharing of information, and community definition of truth derived in transparency and authenticity, the latter being the ultimate arbiter of shared wealth."

Despite this unabashedly radical vision, Steele is hugely respected by senior military intelligence experts across the world. As a researcher at the US Army War College's Strategic Studies Institute, he has authored several monographs advocating the need for open source methods to transform the craft of intelligence. He has lectured to the US State Department and Department of Homeland Security as well as National Security Councils in various countries, and his new book has received accolades from senior intelligence officials across multiple countries including France and Turkey.

Yet he remains an outspoken critic of US intelligence practices and what he sees as their integral role in aggravating rather than ameliorating the world's greatest threats and challenges.

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.

"My early graduate education was in the 1970's when Limits to Growth and World Federalism were the rage. Both sought to achieve an over-view of systemic challenges, but both also suffered from the myth of top-down hubris. What was clear in the 1970s, that has been obscured by political and financial treason in the past half-century, is that everything is connected – what we do in the way of paving over wetlands, or in poisoning ground water 'inadvertently' because of our reliance on pesticides and fertilizers that are not subject to the integrity of the 'Precautionary Principle,' ultimately leads to climate catastrophes that are acts of man, not acts of god."

He points me to his tremendous collection of reviews of books on climate change, disease, environmental degradation, peak oil, and water scarcity. "I see five major overlapping threats on the immediate horizon," he continues. "They are all related: the collapse of complex societies, the acceleration of the Earth's demise with changes that used to take 10,000 years now taking three or less, predatory or shock capitalism and financial crime out of the City of London and Wall Street, and political corruption at scale, to include the west supporting 42 of 44 dictators. We are close to multiple mass catastrophes."

What about the claim that the US is on the brink of revolution? "Revolution is overthrow – the complete reversal of the status quo ante. We are at the end of centuries of what Lionel Tiger calls 'The Manufacture of Evil,' in which merchant banks led by the City of London have conspired with captive governments to concentrate wealth and commoditize everything including humans. What revolution means in practical terms is that balance has been lost and the status quo ante is unsustainable. There are two 'stops' on greed to the nth degree: the first is the carrying capacity of Earth, and the second is human sensibility. We are now at a point where both stops are activating."

Former CIA officer's matrix on the preconditions for revolution

It's not just the US, he adds. "The preconditions of revolution exist in the UK, and most western countries. The number of active pre-conditions is quite stunning, from elite isolation to concentrated wealth to inadequate socialization and education, to concentrated land holdings to loss of authority to repression of new technologies especially in relation to energy, to the atrophy of the public sector and spread of corruption, to media dishonesty, to mass unemployment of young men and on and on and on."

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."

But we need more than revolution, in the sense of overthrow, to effect change, surely. How does your manifesto for 'open source everything' fit into this? "The west has pursued an industrialization path that allows for the privatization of wealth from the commons, along with the criminalization of commons rights of the public, as well as the externalization of all true costs. Never mind that fracking produces earthquakes and poisons aquifers – corrupt politicians at local, state or province, and national levels are all too happy to take money for looking the other way. 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."

Is this a crisis of capitalism, then? Does capitalism need to end for us to resolve these problems? And if so, how? "Predatory capitalism is based on the privatization of profit and the externalization of cost. It is an extension of the fencing of the commons, of enclosures, along with the criminalization of prior common customs and rights. What we need is a system that fully accounts for all costs. Whether we call that capitalism or not is irrelevant to me. But doing so would fundamentally transform the dynamic of present day capitalism, by making capital open source. For example, and as calculated by my colleague JZ Liszkiewicz, a white cotton T-shirt contains roughly 570 gallons of water, 11 to 29 gallons of fuel, and a number of toxins and emissions including pesticides, diesel exhaust, and heavy metals and other volatile compounds – it also generally includes child labor. Accounting for those costs and their real social, human and environmental impacts has totally different implications for how we should organise production and consumption than current predatory capitalism."

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."

Robert Steele's vision for open source systems

On 1st May, Steele sent an open letter to US vice president Joe Bidenrequesting 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.

I'm not particularly surprised. Open source everything pretty much undermines everything the national security state stands for. Why bother even asking vice president Biden to consider it? "The national security state is rooted in secrecy as a means of avoiding accountability. My first book, On Intelligence: Spies and Secrecy in an Open World – which by the way had a foreword from Senator David Boren, the immediate past chairman of the Senate Select Committee for Intelligence - made it quite clear that the national security state is an expensive, ineffective monstrosity that is simply not fit for purpose. In that sense, the national security state is it's own worst enemy – it's bound to fail."

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. CIA cannot even get the population of Syria correct and provides no intelligence - decision-support - to most cabinet secretaries, assistant secretaries, and department heads. Indeed General Tony Zinni, when he was commander in chief of the US Central Command as it was at war, is on record as saying that he received, 'at best,' a meagre 4% of what he needed to know from secret sources and methods."

So does open source mean you are calling for abolition of intelligence agencies as we know them, I ask. "I'm a former spy and I believe we still need spies and secrecy, but we need to redirect the vast majority of the funds now spent on secrecy toward savings and narrowly focused endeavors at home. For instance, utterly ruthless counterintelligence against corruption, or horrendous evils like paedophilia.

"Believe it or not, 95% of what we need for ethical evidence-based decision support cannot be obtained through the secret methods of standard intelligence practices. But it can be obtained quite openly and cheaply from academics, civil society, commerce, governments, law enforcement organizations, the media, all militaries, and non-governmental organizations. An Open Source Agency, as I've proposed it, would not just meet 95% of our intelligence requirements, it would do the same at all levels of government and carry over by enriching education, commerce, and research – it would create what I called in 1995 a 'Smart Nation.'

"The whole point of Open Source Everything is to restore public agency. Open Source is the only form of information and information technology that is affordable to the majority, interoperable across all boundaries, and rapidly scalable from local to global without the curse of overhead that proprietary corporations impose."

Robert Steele's graphic on open source systems thinking

It's clear to me that when Steele talks about intelligence as 'decision-support,' he really does intend that we grasp "all information in all languages all the time" – that we do multidisciplinary research spanning centuries into the past as well as into the future. 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 mobilize 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."

The Arab spring analogy has its negatives. So far, there really isn't much to root for. 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 criticise insiders.'"

But how can activists actually start moving toward the open source vision now? "For starters, there are eight 'tribes' that among them can bring together all relevant information: academia, civil society including labor unions and religions, commerce especially small business, government especially local, law enforcement, media, military, and non-government/non-profit. At every level from local to global, across every mission area, we need to create stewardship councils integrating personalities and information from all eight tribes. We don't need to wait around for someone else to get started. All of us who recognize the vitality of this possibility can begin creating these new grassroots structures from the bottom-up, right now."

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 recognize that they have the power to pull their money out of the banks and not buy the consumer goods that subsidize 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."

For Steele, the open source revolution is inevitable, simply because the demise of the system presided over by the 1% cannot be stopped – and because the alternatives to reclaiming the commons are too dismal to contemplate. We have no choice but to step up.

"My motto, a play on the CIA motto that is disgraced every day, is 'the truth at any cost lowers all other costs'", he tells me. "Others wiser than I have pointed out that nature bats last. We are at the end of an era in which lies can be used to steal from the public and the commons. We are at the beginning of an era in which truth in public service can restore us all to a state of grace."

Dr. Nafeez Ahmed is an international security journalist and academic. He is the author of A User's Guide to the Crisis of Civilization: And How to Save It, and the forthcoming science fiction thriller, ZERO POINT. ZERO POINT is set in a near future following a Fourth Iraq War. Follow Ahmed on Facebook and Twitter.

June 15 2014: People like to offer writers advice. By definition, our focus on writing suggests a certain mental and financial instability. Being too polite—there are exceptions—to say “Why don’t you get a real job?”—the fallbacks tend to be: “Why don’t you write for a magazine?” or “Why don’t you teach?”

It’s none of their business that you have to learn to write. Let them think you were born that way.

Ernest Hemingway

What you want is practice, practice, practice. It doesn’t matter what we write (at least this is my view) at our age, so long as we write continually as well as we can. I feel that every time I write a page either of prose or of verse, with real effort, even if it’s thrown into the fire the next minute, I am so much further on.

C.S. Lewis

I am the sort of man who writes because he has made progress, and who makes progress by writing.

Augustine

Writing, as far as most of us mere mortals are concerned, requires the commitment and focus of a full time job—and more besides. Add in decades of effort, and you may just reach an acceptable standard.

Victor O’Reilly

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Sad to say, I don’t think anyone who doesn’t write themselves, understands writers. Even then, you have got to sub-divide us into those who write for a paycheck—and the few, the brave, the proud, and the mostly broke, who write books in the hope that they will sell. Indeed, some us us even hope to get published by a major publishing house. And some of us, who have had that debatable privilege, live for a time when one can escape the clutches of such dubious middlemen (many are women) and sell near directly to our readers. The money might not be as good, but numerous other factors compensate—and, frankly, you get to associate with a better class of human being.

In truth, you could go on subdividing. Books and related circumstances come in near endless variations, so what all most of us really only have in common is pretty lousy treatment by agents and publishers—if we have the stamina to get that far--and a passion for what we do.

That passion, at least as far as I am concerned, compensates for everything—and it only seems to grow as the years pass.

But there is one extra thing that I should probably mention. That is that the number of jobs that have been shed in the newspaper and magazine business over the last couple of decades has been truly terrifying. As a consequence, it is extremely tough to get magazine work—and it rarely pays well.

A recent report concluded that no less than 54,200 newspaper and magazine jobs had been axed since 2003.

Just thought you should know.

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