Category: Peace Intelligence

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Journal: Cognitive Dissonance in Afghanistan Part II

Cultural Intelligence, IO Multinational, IO Sense-Making, Military, Officers Call, Peace Intelligence
Col Lawrence Sellin: Traitor or Truth-Teller?

Fired colonel calls PowerPoint a crutch

Army Times, By Andrew Tilghman – Staff writer
Posted : Thursday Sep 9, 2010 8:29:12 EDT

Army Reserve Col. Lawrence Sellin has no regrets about publishing a rant about the military’s overreliance on PowerPoint presentations — despite the fact it got him fired from his job at joint command headquarters in Afghanistan.

. . . . . . .

Sellin said his controversial article was the last of several efforts to find something meaningful to do at ISAF headquarters.

. . . . . .

Sellin’s screed highlights a long-simmering controversy inside the military bureaucracy.

Marine Gen. James Mattis, currently chief of U.S. Central Command, told a military conference earlier this year that “PowerPoint makes us stupid.”

And Army Brig. Gen. H.R. McMaster banned PowerPoint presentations as a brigade commander during his successful efforts to secure the northern Iraqi city of Tal Afar in 2005.

Sellin said his complaint is not solely about PowerPoint, the presentation software created in 1987.

“I don’t hate PowerPoint. It’s a useful tool,” he said. “But it can be a crutch as a substitute for thinking. It’s too easy to produce a lot of slides and create volume, not quality. You really think that with a lot of detailed slides that you’re making progress, when you are actually not.”

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Journal: Army Industrial-Era Network Security + Cyber-Security RECAP (Links to Past Posts)

Hacking, IO Multinational, IO Secrets, IO Sense-Making, Military, Peace Intelligence
Marcus Aurelius Recommends

Army Times article, second below, reports what the beginning of what I expect will be a major decline in functionality of Army computer systems.  While some sort of institutional response to the alleged Wikileaks traitor, Specialist Bradley Manning, is appropriate, I don't think this is it.  This is a simplistic approach, the sort of thing the KGB did and presumably the sort of the SVR continues to do.

By the way, IMHO, 91K classified documents on the Internet is not some sort of an inadvertent security violation.  It's almost certainly one of the national security crimes; I think it's treason. Better to concentrate on the perpetrator — try him, convict him, and then, maybe, violate in some significant ways his Constitutional protection against “cruel and unusual punishment” as a highly visible deterrent against espionage.

NOTE:  Image links to source generally as persistent link not available.

Below the line: PBI comment and cyber-security recap (34).

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Journal: Court Excuses CIA & KR Rendition & Torture

07 Other Atrocities, 08 Wild Cards, 09 Justice, Corruption, Government, Intelligence (government), Officers Call, Peace Intelligence

Full Story Online

CIA rendition: US court throws out torture case, citing state secrets

Appeals court judges sound apologetic tone in ruling; plaintiffs say they were tortured overseas in ‘extraordinary rendition' program.

Under the state secrets doctrine, courts have generally granted deference to executive branch claims that certain litigation may involve highly sensitive US government information which, if disclosed, would cause significant damage to national security.

. . . . . .

In a dissent joined by four other judges, Judge Michael Hawkins said the court was wrong to dismiss the entire lawsuit at such an early stage. He said the case should be remanded to a federal judge to determine to what extent actual evidence in the case might raise a threat of disclosing state secrets.

Hawkins acknowledged that the state secrets doctrine is an established precedent. But he said the privilege need not be so broadly enforced.

“The doctrine is so dangerous as a means of hiding governmental misbehavior under the guise of national security, and so violative of common rights of due process, that courts should confine its application to the narrowest circumstances that still protect the government’s essential secrets,” he wrote.

The majority concluded its opinion with a quasi apology to the plaintiffs. “Our holding today is not intended to foreclose – or to prejudge – possible nonjudicial relief, should it be warranted for any of the plaintiffs,” Judge Fisher said.

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Journal: UN on Food Security, It’s All Connected

Civil Society, Commerce, Commercial Intelligence, Earth Intelligence, Government, Methods & Process, Officers Call, Peace Intelligence

Full Article Online

Renewed instability in global food markets requires urgent response, UN expert said

An independent United Nations human rights expert today called on governments and the international community to promptly tackle the renewed instability of global food markets, noting the related social unrest that has hit some countries in recent weeks.

Tip of the Hat to Charles Rault at LinkedIn.

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Journal: CIA Veteran Rings Bell on Iraq–Way Too Late…

10 Security, 11 Society, Civil Society, Collective Intelligence, Corruption, Cultural Intelligence, Ethics, Intelligence (government), Officers Call, Peace Intelligence, Power Behind-the-Scenes/Special Interests, Reform
Marcus Aurelius Recommends

Iraq: Time to Ring the Bell

by Howard P. Hart

27 August 2010

Many years ago I attended a series of Headquarters briefings for out-going CIA Chiefs of Station. Our main speaker was Richard Helms, then the Agency’s Director and one of the lions of American foreign policy in the 1960’s and 70’s. A man who was subsequently crucified in the Nixon catastrophe. Dick was essentially giving us our instructions, and in my mind his most telling directive was the quiet statement: “Ring the Bell.” Telling us to sing out when we apprehended a major disaster in the offing.

It’s time to ring the bell on Iraq.

Briefly put, in a matter of months Iran will emerge the unchallenged military and economic power dominating the area from Lebanon to Pakistan. It will control Iraq, and be in a position to shut off all oil supplies from the Persian Gulf. It will be free to provide extensive assistance to the Taliban in Afghanistan, thus ensuring a NATO defeat in that country. It will be in a position to provide crucial support to radical Islamic elements in Pakistan – which may well result in the collapse of that already shaky nuclear-armed government. It will be free to radically increase its support to a variety of terrorist organizations targeting the US. And, in conjunction with well-armed radical Palestinian forces that already exist on Israel's borders, it will pose the greatest threat ever faced by Israel. A threat that I do not believe Israel could survive without direct US military intervention.

READ THE BALANCE OF THE PIECE BY THIS CIA VETERAN

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Journal: General Petraeus–Human Terrain Team NOT

08 Wild Cards, Cultural Intelligence, Methods & Process, Military, Peace Intelligence
"Is that HTT crawling across the rug over there?"

Did Gen. David Petraeus just call the Human Terrain System worthless? With a few choice sentences to the Wall Street Journal, the top commander in Afghanistan highlighted the disconnect between what the Army’s social science program is supposed to be doing — and what’s actually happening in the field.

“We have never had the granular understanding of local circumstances in Afghanistan that we achieved over time in Iraq,” Petraeus told the Journal. “One of the key elements in our ability to be agile in our activities in Iraq during the surge was a pretty good understanding who the power brokers were in local areas, how the systems were supposed to work, how they really worked.”

Phi Beta Iota: The General fails to recollect that under the Cheney-Bremer regime, all were told to ignore the imams and tribal leaders.  It was only much later, after five years of failure, more or less, than some bright general decided to get back to basics.  As Winston Churchill liked to say, “The Americans always do the right thing, they just try everything else first.”  HTT has been a known failure since its inception.  For one view of how it should fit in with the other fourteen slices of Human Intelligence (HUMINT), see the new monograph from the Strategic Studies Institute,  Human Intelligence: All Humans, All Minds, All the Time (June 2010).    See also John Stanton on HTT Failures.

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Seed Money for Ideas Addressing Global Health Challenges–and the Fly in the Milk Bowl

01 Poverty, 02 Infectious Disease, 07 Health, 12 Water, Gift Intelligence, Peace Intelligence, Technologies

Unorthodox thinking is essential to overcoming the most persistent challenges in global health. Vaccines were first developed over 200 years ago because revolutionary thinkers took an entirely new approach to preventing disease. Grand Challenges Explorations fosters innovation in global health research.

The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation has committed $100 million to encourage scientists worldwide to expand the pipeline of ideas to fight our greatest health challenges.Launched in 2008, Grand Challenge Explorations grants have already been awarded to 340 researchers from 34 countries.

Open to All Disciplines: Anyone Can Apply
The grant program is open to anyone from any discipline, from student to tenured professor, and from any organization – colleges and universities, government laboratories, research institutions, non-profit organizations and for-profit companies.

Agile, Accelerated Grant-Making
The initiative uses an agile, accelerated grant-making process with short two-page applications and no preliminary data required.

Applications are submitted online, and winning grants are chosen approximately 4 months from the submission deadline.Initial grants of $100,000 are awarded two times a year. Successful projects have the opportunity to receive a follow-on grant of up to $1 million.

Example: Water Sanitation Challenge that earns $100,000

De-compartmentalizing science through Grandchallenges.org

Phi Beta Iota: The problem with this well-intentioned initiative is that it throws money as items in isolation.  All well and good.  It would be much more impressive if it had a strategic analytic model that emphasized healthy lifestyle, healthy environment, and natural/alternative cures; and if it demanded some form of intelligence coordination in relation to all the other policies that impact on health far more negatively that we can solve–the bottom line is that we are killing our species faster than any amount of innovation can help it survive.  In our humble opinion.

noble gold