Month: May 2011

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Worth A Look: Book on CIA’s View of Open Sources

Intelligence (Government/Secret), Worth A Look
Amazon Page

Hamilton Bean

$49.95, 218 pages

Available for Pre-Order, 31 May 2011

Phi Beta Iota: Mr. Bean means well, but this is a three star book at best, losing one star for being grotesquely over-priced and a second for being completely out of touch with the Open Source Intelligence world outside the albino incest pit at CIA, while also completely oblivious to all that is going on across 90 different nations and the eight tribes of intelligence. The book's coverage of the US scene is mediocre, missing Bill Studeman, Joe Markowitz, Carol Dumain, Doug Dearth, and Ben Harrison, among many others–a simple comparison of Golden Candle Awards with those named in the index makes clear the very limited “official” range of views, most of them ranging from the totally unethical to the obliviously bureaucratic.  A pre-quel to the book is available at the link below, as well as the riposte that was reviewed in draft by Studeman and Markowtiz.

2007 IJIC 20/2 The DNI’s Open Source Center

2008 IJIC 21/3 The Open Source Program: Missing in Action

See Also:

Journal: LEXIS-NEXIS OSINT Kiss to CIA/OSC

History of Opposition (15)

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USG on Oil: Doing the Wrong Thing Righter….

01 Agriculture, 03 Economy, 05 Energy, 06 Family, 07 Health, 07 Other Atrocities, 09 Justice, 11 Society, 12 Water, Commerce, Corruption, Earth Intelligence, Government, IO Impotency, Power Behind-the-Scenes/Special Interests, Strategy, True Cost

Obama says ‘Drill, baby, drill.' Will new oil policy ease gas prices?

President Obama used his weekly address to announce steps to promote greater domestic oil production and reduce the burden of high gas prices. Republicans say it's not enough.

Big Oil's Political Ploy

Whatever else we might say about Big Oil in the United States, we have to give the industry credit for one thing: it has mastered the art of scamming us with a perfectly straight face.

Freshmen challenge energy subsidies

Pompeo and Labrador were joined by Grover Norquist of Americans for Tax Reform and Mike Needham of Heritage Action Fund. The two organizations joined a coalition of conservative groups in March, including Americans for Prosoperity, in a letter calling for an end to energy subsidies.

 

Click on Image to Enlarge

Phi Beta Iota: US politicians have substituted ideology for intelligence (decision-support) and borrowing for thinking.  There is nothing intelligent in US energy policy, because there is no policy–just a long string of subsidies and hand-outs and tax exemptions.  The oil drilling decisions are an example of doing the wrong thing righter, instead of the right thing (Russell Ackoff).  The “policy” decisions are also hypocritical because nothing being decided today will have substantive effect in less than ten years.  Here's what an intelligent government would use to think about energy futures…and everything else, all together.

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Review (Guest): Tangled Webs: How False Statements are Undermining America — From Martha Stewart to Bernie Madoff

5 Star, America (Founders, Current Situation), Capitalism (Good & Bad), Complexity & Catastrophe, Corruption, Crime (Corporate), Crime (Government), Culture, Research, Environment (Problems), Executive (Partisan Failure, Reform), Impeachment & Treason, Information Society, Justice (Failure, Reform), Misinformation & Propaganda, Politics, Power (Pathologies & Utilization), Public Administration, Secrecy & Politics of Secrecy, Threats (Emerging & Perennial), True Cost & Toxicity, Voices Lost (Indigenous, Gender, Poor, Marginalized)
Amazon Page

James B. Stewart

Product Description

Bestselling author James B. Stewart's newsbreaking investigation of our era's most high-profile perjurers, revealing the alarming extent of this national epidemic.

Our system of justice rests on a simple proposition: that witnesses will raise their hands and tell the truth. In Tangled Webs, James B. Stewart reveals in vivid detail the consequences of the perjury epidemic that has swept our country, undermining the very foundation of our courts.

With many prosecutors, investigators, and participants speaking for the first time, Tangled Webs goes behind the scene of the trials of media and homemaking entrepreneur Martha Stewart; top White House political adviser Lewis “Scooter” Libby; home-run king Barry Bonds; and Wall Street money manager Bernard Madoff.

Guest Review

5.0 out of 5 stars A first-rate story teller takes on the lying addiction of the rich and famous, April 19, 2011 By F. Hayes-Roth (Monterey, CA USA) – See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)

Lying seems epidemic in American society. Stewart focuses his superb writing skills on the general problem of perjury and lying under oath by highlighting the cases of four celebrated liars: Martha Stewart (no apparent relation to the author), Scooter Libby, Barry Bonds, and Bernie Madoff. For each of these, he asks the same question: “Why would people with so much to lose put so much at risk by lying under oath?” Ultimately, the answer becomes obvious: “They thought they could get away with it.”

Continue reading “Review (Guest): Tangled Webs: How False Statements are Undermining America — From Martha Stewart to Bernie Madoff”

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Is ‘Arab Spring’ Coming To Kabul?

08 Wild Cards, 11 Society, Advanced Cyber/IO, Civil Society, Counter-Oppression/Counter-Dictatorship Practices, Cultural Intelligence, Ethics, InfoOps (IO), IO Sense-Making, Methods & Process, Mobile
DefDog Recommends....

Is ‘Arab Spring' Coming To Kabul?

Radio Free Europe, 13 May 2011

The recent emergence of the first, large-scale Facebook movement among Afghan university students calling for reform can't help but raise the question — will the wave of antigovernment dissent in the Middle East reach Afghanistan?

Since March, some 1,500 university students in Kabul, and another 3,000 elsewhere around the country, have “friended” the Facebook page “Reformists.” There, they meet daily for discussions about how to exert grassroots pressure on the government — pressure that barely exists in Afghanistan today.

In some ways, the movement is very much like similar Facebook groups in the Arab world.

Read more….

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Review (Guest): Up from Eden–A Transpersonal View of Human Evolution

5 Star, Consciousness & Social IQ, Culture, Research, Intelligence (Collective & Quantum), Intelligence (Public), Intelligence (Wealth of Networks), Philosophy, Values, Ethics, Sustainable Evolution
Amazon Page

Ken Wilber

Phi Beta Iota: Harrison Owen considers this one of Ken Wilber's most important contributions to humanity.

5.0 out of 5 stars The Painful History of Mankind- and a way Beyond…, July 12, 2002

By Nicq MacDonald (Sioux Falls, SD United States)

After the success of his initial works (The Spectrum of Consciousness and No Boundary), Ken Wilber gave his “spectrum” model a serious reappraisal and found it woefully lacking. It seemed that he had made a mistake that he goes on to chide others for in his later books- he confused prerational myths with transcendental truths, and confused the spiritual fall with the scientific fall. He makes up for his previous errors with “Up From Eden: A Transpersonal View of Human Evolution”.

Continue reading “Review (Guest): Up from Eden–A Transpersonal View of Human Evolution”

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Review (Guest): No Boundary–Eastern and Western Approaches to Personal Growth

4 Star, Consciousness & Social IQ, Culture, Research, Intelligence (Collective & Quantum), Intelligence (Public), Intelligence (Wealth of Networks), Philosophy, Values, Ethics, Sustainable Evolution
Amazon Page

Ken Wilber

Editorial Reviews

“Ken Wilber is one of the most important pioneers in the field of consciousness in this century.”—Deepak Chopra

“The most sensible, comprehensive book on consciousness since William James.”—Dr. James Fadiman, President, Association for Transpersonal Psychology

“No Boundary does for this generation what Alan Watts' writings did for an earlier one. It brings the most difficult subject of all—nature of consciousness—into an easily grasped presentation that is both elegant and simple.”—John White, editor of Kundalini, Evolution, and Enlightenment Continue reading “Review (Guest): No Boundary–Eastern and Western Approaches to Personal Growth”

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