Category: Peace Intelligence

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Event Report: 30 Jun-1 July, NYC – ICSR Peace and Security Summit

01 Poverty, 03 India, 04 Indonesia, 05 Civil War, 05 Iran, 08 Wild Cards, 09 Terrorism, 10 Security, 10 Transnational Crime, 12 Water, Academia, Civil Society, Collective Intelligence, Corruption, Cultural Intelligence, Government, History, Law Enforcement, Methods & Process, Military, Non-Governmental, Peace Intelligence, Policy, Strategy, Technologies
Event link

Peace and Security Summit Event Report/Notes

+ Host: London-based International Centre for the Study of Radicalization and Political Violence

+ Partners, Affiliates, Financial Support: National Defense Univ, Rena & Sami David, The Rockefeller Foundation, Public Safety Canada, Center on Global Counterterrorism Cooperation, Centre for Policy Research, New Dehli, Dept of War Studies , King's College London, Inst for Strategic Threat Analysis & Response, Univ of Penn, International Inst for Counter-Terrorism, Interdisciplinary Center Herzliya, Pakistan Inst for Peace Studies, Regional Centre on Conflict Prevention, Jordan Inst of Diplomacy

> Overall, disappointing but reviewing these notes shows there are some good nuggets to take + connect.

BIGGEST SURPRISE = NOT ONE MENTION ABOUT FINANCING OF TERRORISM

Continue reading “Event Report: 30 Jun-1 July, NYC – ICSR Peace and Security Summit”

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Where We Are Winning – Where We Are Losing: Futurologists Publish Annual Report on Major World Problems and Opportunities

01 Poverty, 03 Economy, 03 Environmental Degradation, 04 Education, 05 Energy, 06 Family, 11 Society, 12 Water, Academia, Civil Society, Collective Intelligence, Commerce, Corruption, Government, Key Players, Non-Governmental, Peace Intelligence

Millennium Project / State of the Future web portal

Where We Are Winning – Where We Are Losing:

Futurologists Publish Annual Report on Major World Problems and Opportunities

Berlin 7th July 2010 – Can civilization implement solutions fast enough to keep ahead of the looming challenges? The Millennium Project, a global independent think tank of futurologists, and thought leaders, today published its 14th report on global perspectives in Germany and around the world. Until two years ago the report showed a positive trend in the so-called “State of the Future Index” (SOFI). Triggered by the financial and economic crises and the failure of the climate conference in Copenhagen, the current SOFI shows that the prospects of success in solving some major global challenges have become somewhat clouded.

What the authors see as lacking the most, according to Jerome Glenn,
Director of the Millennium Project, are a serried of serious global
strategies to be implemented by governments, companies, NGOs, UN
institutions and other international bodies.” The world is in a race between
implementing ever-increasing ways to improve the human condition and the
seemingly ever-increasing complexity and scale of global problems. After 14
years of research into the future within the framework of the Millennium
Project it is increasingly clear that the world has the necessary capacity
to cope with its problems. However, it remains unclear whether humankind
will make the right decisions on the scale necessary to meet the global
challenges appropriately”, said Glenn.

Among the regular sections in the ninety page ‘State of the Future' report
are the annually updated analyses of the fifteen key global challenges, as
well as the publication of the State of the Future Index (SOFI). The index
identifies areas in which there has been either an improvement or
deterioration during the past 20 years and creates projections for these
scenarios over the coming decade. All relevant and recognised studies by the
UN or World Bank are distilled as part of these projections.

On individual results of the State of the Future Index:

Where We Are Winning
Continue reading “Where We Are Winning – Where We Are Losing: Futurologists Publish Annual Report on Major World Problems and Opportunities”

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Journal: PSYOP Dies, Renamed, Still Dead

Augmented Reality, Cultural Intelligence, info-graphics/data-visualization, InfoOps (IO), Military, Officers Call, Peace Intelligence

Marcus Aurelius Recommends

PSYOP has long had problems being PSYOP.  Overseas they often work as “Military Information Support Teams” (MISTs).  If you want to get them significantly spun up, try to discuss with them “perception management” or “deception.”  Try that and they tend to go to ground very quickly.  As for nefarious, spooky, and master manipulators, US PSYOP has always been dwarfed by the British; e.g., “Soldatensender Calais,” documented in Sefton Delmer's “Black Boomerang.”  Personally, I just don't think the current Executive Branch of the USG has the will to play a full-up, full-spectrum game in the national security/foreign policy arena.  Now, soon, or later, we will pay for that in needless loss of life.  Remember always John Stewart Mill:  “War is an ugly thing but not the ugliest of things. …”

“Psychological Operations” Are Now “Military Information Support Operations”

3 July 2010

By Kevin Maurer
Associated Press
July 2, 2010

The Army has dropped the Vietnam-era name “psychological operations” for its branch in charge of trying to change minds behind enemy lines, acknowledging the term can sound ominous.

The Defense Department picked a more neutral moniker: “Military Information Support Operations,” or MISO.

U.S. Special Operations Command spokesman Ken McGraw said Thursday the new name, adopted last month, more accurately reflects the unit’s job of producing leaflets, radio broadcasts and loudspeaker messages to influence enemy soldiers and civilians.

“One of the catalysts for the transition is foreign and domestic sensitivities to the term ‘psychological operations’ that often lead to a misunderstanding of the mission,” McGraw said.

Fort Bragg is home to the 4th Psychological Operations Group, the Army’s only active duty psychological operations unit. Psychological operations soldiers are trained at the post.

The name change is expected to extend to all military services, a senior defense official said in Washington. The official, who has direct knowledge of the change, spoke on condition of anonymity because not all services have announced how they will revamp or rename their psychological operations offices.

The change was driven from the top, by Pentagon policymakers working for Defense Secretary Robert Gates. It reflects unease with the Cold War echoes of the old terminology, and the implication that the work involved subterfuge.

The change, however, left some current practitioners of psychological operations cold. Gone is the cool factor, posters to online military blogs said. With a name like MISO, one wrote, you might as well join the supply command.

Alfred H. Paddock, Jr., a retired colonel who was Director for Psychological Operations in the Office of the Secretary of Defense from 1986 to 1988, said the term has always had some baggage and been difficult to explain.

“Somehow it gives a nefarious connotation, but I think that this baggage can be overcome,” said Paddock, who also served three combat tours with Special Forces in Laos and Vietnam.

He said the military was giving in to political correctness by changing the name.

Psychological operations have been cast as spooky in movies and books over the years portraying the soldiers as master manipulators. The 2009 movie “The Men Who Stare at Goats,” staring George Clooney, was about an army unit that trains psychic spies, based on Jon Ronson’s nonfiction account of the U.S. military’s hush-hush research into psychic warfare and espionage.

But the real mission is far more mundane. During the 2003 invasion of Iraq, psychological operations units dropped leaflets urging Iraqis to surrender.

In Vietnam, a psychological operations effort called the Open Arms Program bombarded Viet Cong units with surrender appeals written by former members. The program got approximately 200,000 Viet Cong fighters to defect.

McGraw said the name change was approved by Defense Secretary Robert Gates and Adm. Eric Olson, the Special Operations commander, in mid-June.

Many in the psychological operations community, including Paddock, dislike the new name.

“Military Information Support Operations, or MISO, is not something that rolls off the tip of your tongue,” Paddock said. “It makes it even more difficult for psychological operations personnel to explain what they do. That they still have the capability to employ programs and themes designed to influence the behavior of foreign target audiences.”

Original Source

Phi Beta Iota: PSYOP is 80% fraud, waste, and abuse, and that percentage is kind.  They are still teaching enlisted people at Fort Bragg how to load aircraft propaganda cannisters to deliver leaflets to people who by and large cannot read.  80% of PSYOP billets, dollars, and facilities should be immediately transferred to the Civil Affairs Corps, and used to transition to the regional brigades that include a single multinational Civil Affairs Brigade for each region, along with direct support multinational battalions for military police, combat engineers, medical, and organic land, sea, and air units, all built around a US C4I hub with both regional and donor country (e.g. Nordics) participation.

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Journal: Continuity of Gerbil Operations

08 Wild Cards, Cultural Intelligence, Government, Law Enforcement, Military, Peace Intelligence
Marcus Aurelius Recommends

COMMENTS:

1.  The “fact of” PDB distribution is well known; Administrations influence who is on the distro list.

2.  Of the principals showcased here, some are (at least sort of) competent patriotic and some…well…

3.  This article is, perhaps unknowingly, deceptive in that it creates an impression that USG is postured to continue mission 24/7 from wherever necessary.  Not necessarily so.  There is a long established and openly acknowledged “Continuity of Operations” (COOP) program and a related personnel program, “telework,” that are essentially broken — misunderstood and pitifully under-resourced.  At least within DoD, the COOP programs are inextricably trapped in Cold War mentalities where the principal threat was nuclear strikes on key command and control nodes.  The concept was that a very small and elite segment of the workforce evacuated to predesignated facilities to sustain a very small set of “mission essential functions” for a relatively short period (say less than 30 days) after which the survivors emerge from their smoking holes and restart the world.  That mindset endures.  COOP and the people running it have not been able to transition to the idea that contingencies now exist that require USG to sustain a much greater fraction (say; 90%) of normal day to day functions for much longer periods (say 270 cumulative days over an 18-24 month period) and do it from distributed locations in order to intentionally avoid concentrating the workforce.  Inflexible security policies retard achievement of that standard as does misconstruction of “telework,” which is cast as a personnel benefit program, intended as a reward for a picked set of supposed high performing employees, and hampered by traditional information security strictures, computer security strictures, and pervasive management concerns about how to intensively manage and supervise teleworkers in order to ensure that they do not defraud the government.  Some of the policy documents governing telework are mind-boggling garbage.  Further, the overriding intent is that the teleworking employee financially support telework, particularly internet access back to the employing agency and in many cases basic hardware and software.)

President Obama's nighthawks: Top officials charged with guarding the nation's safety

By Laura Blumenfeld Washington Post Staff Writer

Sunday, July 4, 2010; A01

Headlights approach on an empty road. A government agent steps out of an armored SUV, carrying a locked, black satchel.

“Here's the bag,” the agent says, to the intelligence official. “Here's the key.”

The key turns, and out slides a brown leather binder, gold-stamped TOP SECRET. The President's Daily Brief, perhaps the most secret book on Earth.

The PDB handoff happens in the dead of every night. The book distills the nation's greatest threats, intelligence trends and concerns, and is written by a team at CIA headquarters.

FULL STORY ONLINE

Phi  Beta Iota: The President's Daily Brief (PDB) costs $75 billion a year to produce, and provides the President and senior commanders with “at best” 4% of what he  needs to know.  The US Intelligence Community lacks a strategic analytic model and does nothing of consequence for Cabinet Secretaries, regional and functional Assistant Secretaries, or individual action officers (e.g. the one deep Energy officer responsible for proliferation).  Madeline Albright it right when she described herself and others as “gerbils on a wheel.”

See also:

Continue reading “Journal: Continuity of Gerbil Operations”

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Journal: William Polk on Afghanistan Non-Strategy Plus Consolidated Journal, Review, and Reference Links for Afghanistan

08 Wild Cards, Cultural Intelligence, Government, Law Enforcement, Military, Peace Intelligence
Chuck Spinney Recommends

William R. Polk recently sent out the attached letter to his distribution list.  It is a very comprehensive and I believe important review of Afghanistan.  I urge you to take the time to read it.  Appended to the end are a series of notes he used in the construction of his letter.   Polk know of which he speaks: his book Violent Politics (Harper Collins, 2007) is one of the very best books on guerrilla warfare, insurrection, and terrorism I have ever read.  You can learn more about Polk and his writings by visiting his website http://www.williampolk.com/

Chuck Spinney, Kalamata, Greece

William R. Polk [personal web site]
669 Chemin de la Sine, 06140 Vence, France
williamrpolk@post.harvard.edu
(33) 493581627

June 27, 2010

Dear Colleagues and Friends,

On June 24, the International Herald Tribune published an editorial from its parent, The New York Times, entitled “Obama’s Decision.”  Both the attribution –  printing in the two newspapers which ensures that the editorial will reach both directly and through subsidiary reprinting almost every “decision maker” in the world – and the date – just before the appointment of David Petraeus to succeed Stanley McChrystal – are significant.  They could have suggested a momentary lull in which basic questions on the Afghan war might have been reconsidered.

That did not happen.  The President made clear his belief that the strategy of the war was sound and his commitment to continue it even if the general responsible for it had to be changed.

The editorial sounded a  different note arising from the events surrounding the fall of General McChrystal:   Mr. Obama, said The Times, “must order all of his top advisers to stop their sniping and maneuvering” and come up with a coherent political and military plan for driving back the Taliban and building a minimally effective Afghan government.”

In short, Mr. Obama must get his team together and evolve a plan.

Unfortunately, the task he faces is not that simple.

Continue reading “Journal: William Polk on Afghanistan Non-Strategy Plus Consolidated Journal, Review, and Reference Links for Afghanistan”

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Peace-Building Thru Spotlights on Local Insights

01 Poverty, 04 Education, 04 Inter-State Conflict, 05 Civil War, 06 Family, 06 Genocide, 07 Health, 07 Other Atrocities, 08 Immigration, 09 Justice, 09 Terrorism, 10 Security, 10 Transnational Crime, 11 Society, Civil Society, Collective Intelligence, Corruption, Government, Military, Non-Governmental, Peace Intelligence
www.peacedirect.org

Stop Conflict. Save lives. 40 per cent of conflicts will restart within 10 years of a peace treaty being signed. 90 per cent of the people who die in those conflicts are not armed forces, but civilians, many of them children. We need to stop these conflicts from restarting, to stop people from dying. Peace Direct funds local peace-builders to build lasting peace.
Our vision is a world where the work and knowledge of local peace-builders is central to all strategies for managing conflict. Our mission is to fund local people who are working for peace in their communities. It makes sense to act before a conflict leads to a full blown humanitarian crisis, and to do that we need to listen to the local people who are there on the ground and can see the warning signs.

http://www.insightonconflict.org

Insight on Conflict is Peace Direct’s resource on local peace-builders in conflict areas.
You’ll find information on how local people are working to resolve some of the longest and bloodiest conflicts around the world.
Insight on Conflict provides information on local peace-building organisations in areas of conflict. Local peace-builders already make a real impact in conflict areas. They work to prevent violent conflicts before they start, to reduce the impact of violence, and to bring divided communities together in the aftermath of violence. However, their work is often ignored – either because people aren’t aware of the existence and importance of local peace-builders in general, or because they simply haven’t had access to information and contacts for local peace-builders. We hope that Insight on Conflict can help redress the balance by drawing attention to important work of local peace-builders. On this site, you’ll be able to find out who the local peace-builders are, what they do, and how you might get in touch with them. Over half the organisations featured on Insight on Conflict do not have their own website.

Thanks to the Global Peace Index Twitter feed for this resource. Also see the Inst for War & Peace Reporting.

Link to conflict areas they highlight: Bosnia-Herzegovina, Burundi, Colombia, DR Congo, Kashmir, Kosovo, Israel & The Occupied Palestinian Territories, Lebanon, Liberia, Nepal, Northern Ireland, Pakistan, Serbia, Sri Lanka, Sudan, Thailand

Related (yet not):
Food4Peace – Conflict Kitchen
(only serves cuisine from countries that the United States is in conflict with)

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Journal: Afghanistan, Pakistan, Punjab, and Taliban

08 Wild Cards, 09 Terrorism, 10 Security, Law Enforcement, Military, Peace Intelligence
Berto Jongman Recommends...
By Ahmad Majidyar  |  AEI Online
(June 2010)

Key points in this Outlook:

  • Tehrik-e Taliban Pakistan and al Qaeda have teamed up with Punjabi militant and sectarian groups to destabilize Punjab, Pakistan's most populous province.
  • Although the militants have yet to assert the same control in southern Punjab that they did in Swat Valley or Waziristan, there are signs that such a scenario is possible.
  • Counterterrorism, intelligence, and police operations are more likely to make inroads than outright military operations.

See Also:  Press Release RAND 21 June 2010, Failed Strategy to Half Pakistan-Based Militant Groups Has Helped Lead to Rising Number of US Terror Plots; and report, Counterinsurgency in Pakistan.  Phi Beta Iota:  Pakistan has displaced Saudi Arabia as the primary sponsor of international terrorism (along with the Israeli Mossad that fills in when needed).  The US is deliberately blind to this reality.