George Soros wrote the introduction to Chuck Sudetic's new book The Philanthropy of George Soros. An excerpt was published in the most recent issue of The New York Review of Books I've also included the text below.
All best, Michael Vachon
Phi Beta Iota: Emphasis added below the line. This is an extraordinary statement by George Soros that is a manifesto calling for a restoration of transparency, truth, and trust–public intelligence in the public interest. Now imagine George Soros linking up with Sir Richard Branson to create a global brand, “The Virgin Truth,” and a global autonomous Internet that allows the hybrid networks envisioned by J. F. Rischard in HIGH NOON.
Believe it or not….NATO appears to be attentive to and leveraging the “intellectual capital” outside the confines of its Member state intelligence services.
Robert Rowley, 48, supervisor of a Dairy Queen in Arizona, said he has already seen results from his Twitter activism. He was among the first to notice fuel tankers slipping past NATO warships and docking at ports controlled by Col. Gadhafi, which led to NATO interdictions.
He also wonders whether his tweets might be connected to the bombing of a Gadhafi communications centre in Tripoli. Combing through satellite images, he noticed that a property listed as a commercial warehouse had a yard containing what appeared to be military vehicles. He published his observations; 10 hours later, the spot was hit by a NATO air strike.
“I’m 5,000 miles away,” he said, in an interview before his shift at the ice-cream parlour. “It’s a very weird feeling.”
Phi Beta Iota: David Moore is one of a tiny handful of pioneers that remain employed within the US Intelligence Community, but like Carmen Medina, Carol Dumaine, Andy Shepard and others, the “establishment” cannot comprehend anything anti-thetical to business as usual. This is a good book, it merits careful study, along with the works of Jack Davis, who remains the dean of the US intelligence analytic cadre. Sadly, it cannot make up for the hiring of young people with limited real-world experience and virtually no substantive foreign language, culture, and history knowledge; it cannot make up for a collection system that is insanely criminal; and it cannot make up for a security system that is criminally insane, excluding deep broad M4IS2 as an option. The secret world is dead, they just have not been buried yet.
I get this question all the time: “How do you verify social media data?” This question drives many of the conversations on crowdsourcing and crisis mapping these days. It's high time that we start compiling our tips and tricks into an online how-to-guide so that we don't have to start from square one every time the question comes up. We need to build and accumulate our shared knowledge in information forensics. So here is the Google Doc version of this blog post, please feel free to add your best practices and ask others to contribute. Feel free to also add links to other studies on verifying social media content.
If every source we monitored in the social media space was known and trusted, then the need for verification would not be as pronounced. In other words, it is the plethora and virtual anonymity of sources that makes us skeptical of the content they deliver. The process of verifying social media data thus requires a two-step process: the authentication of the source as reliable and the triangulation of the content as valid. If we can authenticate the source and find it trustworthy, this may be sufficient to trust the content and mark is a verified depending on context. If source authentication is difficult to ascertain, then we need to triangulate the content itself.
An embedded reporter snaps war footage. The U.S. military-industrial complex and media work together to propagate the agenda of government.
NATO’s decision to intervene in Libya on humanitarian grounds has become an alarming and revealing assessment of America’s understanding of war. The way the “established” media portrayed the Libyan conflict, and its subsequent reception, illustrates our society’s failure to recognize how the power dynamics of plutocratic governance shape our realities. There is significant historical evidence that during times of war propaganda is used to justify military action for special interests. If we are to believe the theme of “change” will define our generation, we must pierce through both the media and the government’s rationalization of war.
I have found the established media’s reporting on Libya to be lacking in depth and consideration of an alternative to military intervention. This is not unusual. History repeatedly shows that during times of war, the established media have a tendency to mislead, deceive, and (in some instances) fabricate to serve the interests of the rich and powerful. This is shown through the writings of Carl Bernstein, the Nayirah testimony, the treatment of former U.S. Congresswoman Cynthia McKinney, and the beginning of the Iraq and Afghan wars. Essentially, the media has been used to facilitate consent, not dissent.
Given the assumption that we learn from history, our passive acceptance of such reporting is surprising. In 1758, author Samuel Johnson wrote, “Among the calamities of war may be justly numbered the diminution of the love of truth, by the falsehoods which interest dictates and credulity encourages.” Later, President Dwight Eisenhower warned us of the emerging military-industrial complex, which we learned has a tradition of lying in addition to tremendous governmental influence. If the military has to go to such lengths for approval, it is clearly not what we naturally desire. Thus, why has there not been more widespread skepticism and objection with regard to Libya?
Led by the U.S., NATO used reports of imminent danger to civilians as justification for humanitarian intervention. Yet, history shows that there is a good reason to approach this explanation with skepticism. In fact, it was recently reported that President Barack Obama exaggerated the humanitarian threat. Once we consider issues such as who the Libyan rebels are and what role oil, banking, previous planning, and geopolitics play in the situation, it seems that history is repeating itself.
The question for our generation becomes: At what point do we categorically reject war and its mechanisms from the beginning rather than in retrospect? We can do this by repudiating all war. We must reject the seemingly righteous theory of humanitarian intervention because it is divorced from how social conflicts actually arise and are resolved. The idea that bombing — an indiscriminate killing method the U.S. has become notoriously inaccurate at — can improve a situation is untenable. The most recent example is Kosovo; it was the nonviolent movement that ultimately resolved the conflict. Moreover, what right does any country have to determine the affairs of another country? This is the same expression of moral superiority used to justify imperialism.
If we want to live in a world of peace, we must learn from our history and see that war is an unnatural phenomenon; we need to reject it on a philosophical and spiritual level. Removing war from our conscience creates space for dialogue and diplomacy, and brings us closer to a shared utopia.
Was born in Kingston, Jamaica, raised in Atlanta, Georgia, attended high school in Torino, Italy, obtained a history degree from the University of British Columbia in Vancouver, Canada, and is currently a Juris Doctorate candidate at the University of the District of Columbia, David A. Clarke School of Law. Coy's primary interests are stimulating our natural impulse to collaborate with one another, exploring and deepening our collective consciousness, and building small-scale, sustainable communities where appreciation of the environment, and our role within it, is deeply embedded within the culture. For more, check out the website: http://www.everythingology.com
Phi Beta Iota: Standard elite distortions of reality occur through Forbidden Knowledge, Rule by Secrecy, Lost History, Manufacturing Consent, Propaganda, Weapons of Mass Deception, Fog Facts, and Missing information, among others. All of these terms are titles of books. Information Forensics, and Public Intelligence in the Public Interest, are the antidotes.
But they still cannot distinguish between a person taking a dump and one planting a bomb…..technology does not win wars. This does not improve the analytical ability of the force.
Phi Beta Iota: It also perpetuates the twin evils of spending money we don't have to kill, maim, and anger people who have nothing to do with anything that matters to the US public. The BEST use of micro-drones is to provide eyes and ears for the infantry. The WORST use of armed drones is to give the power to kill to someone remote from reality with no ethical grounding. As we now know, bandwidth is more expensive than a human pilot, who also comes with situational awareness.
