Month: November 2011

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Review: This Changes Everything

4 Star, America (Founders, Current Situation), Banks, Fed, Money, & Concentrated Wealth, Capitalism (Good & Bad), Change & Innovation, Civil Society, Congress (Failure, Reform), Consciousness & Social IQ, Corruption, Crime (Corporate), Crime (Government), Democracy, Economics, Executive (Partisan Failure, Reform), Intelligence (Public), Nature, Diet, Memetics, Design, Peace, Poverty, & Middle Class, Politics, Power (Pathologies & Utilization), Priorities, Public Administration
Amazon Page

Sarah van Geider et al.

4.0 out of 5 stars Annoying, But Recommended,November 18, 2011

As someone who has been following the Occupy movement since 17 September, and whose informal video (done by someone else) went viral from the front page of Reddit, I have a deep–very deep–interest in seeing Occupy achieve tangible results. I have intimately engaged with both the plethora of “demands” and the internal divisions among everyone from the anarchists to the free-riders.

This book is annoying because it is just a bit too slick and opportunistic for my taste. Use Inside the Book to see what you are getting. It is priced very reasonably (and cheaper if bought directly from YES Magazine) and it certainly deserves to be in any library intent on capturing as much about the Occupy movement as possible, but this is not a world-changing book nor does it actually help Occupy get anywhere specific.

In fairness, though, consider visiting the YES book sale site for paragraphs on each of the ten ways YES believes Occupy has changed everything; I will only list the ten blurbs without debating their merits.

Continue reading “Review: This Changes Everything”

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NIGHTWATCH: Afghanistan – Nothing New Since 2001

04 Inter-State Conflict, 05 Civil War, 08 Wild Cards, Peace Intelligence

Afghanistan: Afghanistan will likely plunge into civil and regional war if the United States does not leave a residual force of 20,000 to 30,000 troops in the country after 2014, along with significant economic aid, a senior Afghan opposition figure said Thursday. ‘The state will disintegrate' and Afghan security forces will break into factions, said Mohammad Hanif Atmar, a former minister in the government of President Karzai.

Comment: The above assertion is not true in part. A residual US force would be primarily a target that would be too weak to prevent a return to civil war. As for the prediction of civil war — or more accurately tribal war — there is no power on earth than can stop it, whether the US keeps soldiers in Afghanistan or not. It has never stopped.

Nothing has been settled since 2001, including the terms for the distribution of wealth among the tribes; the role of Islam in government; ethnic relations between North and South; the ultimate form of the state; and finally, security.

NIGHTWATCH KGS Home

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Event: 11 February 2012 World Information Architecture Day

Advanced Cyber/IO

1 DAY. 14 CITIES.

World IA Day 2012 is about bringing the Information Architecture community together. We’re fostering links within local communities and on a global scale. We’re sharing information, ideas and research. And we’re doing it through unconventional, exciting and engaging IA events this February.

The first ever World IA Day focuses on Designing Structures for Understanding. On February 11, 2012, we’re hosting WIAD events in 14 cities across all corners of the globe. Learn from world-class IA minds, network, showcase new ideas and attend events tailored specifically to your community. We hope you’ll join us at an event near you this February!

Local Connections. Global Impact. World IA Day 2012

Learn more.

Tip of the Hat to Peter Morville at LinkedIn.

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Owl: Visual Analytics – corruption, fraud, waste and abuse

Advanced Cyber/IO, Corruption, InfoOps (IO), Methods & Process
Who? Who?

Screen-friendly report: Visual analytics; Revealing corruption, fraud, waste and abuse PDF logo to download Anti-Corruption report

For entities around the globe, identifying potential fraud and corruption activities in large volumes of data has historically been difficult and quite costly. More often than not, the rich insights within that data may be difficult to identify by traditional means and remain hidden.

Against this backdrop, practitioners are turning to visual analytic tools and techniques. Graphically representing and exploring data can bring clarity to executives’ concerns and to performance improvement opportunities.

Visual analytics tools and techniques, including social networking diagrams, link analysis, geospatial analysis and tree maps, can help to focus investigations on particular activities and connect disparate pieces of information to form a cohesive story. Entities should consider equipping their personnel to employ these techniques to meet the growing challenge of reducing corruption, fraud, waste and abuse in the enterprise.

Download the PDF below to learn more. Two versions are provided to accommodate your viewing preferences: a standard version for printing and a screen version for reading on your computer or mobile device.

Phi Beta Iota:  This is not new–they are roughly fifteen years behind Dr. Bert Little, who pioneered this work for the Department of Agriculture, virtually eradicating crop insurance fraud ($4 million invested stopped $80 million a year in fraud).  Dr. Little received a Golden Candle Award at OSS '94 and continues to do extraordinary detection of corruption with clever computing across the Texas A&M University System.

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Robert Steele: Waterboarding Morons — A Social Cancer

07 Other Atrocities, 09 Justice, 10 Security, 11 Society, Civil Society, Collective Intelligence, Corruption, Counter-Oppression/Counter-Dictatorship Practices, Cultural Intelligence, Director of National Intelligence et al (IC), DoD, Ethics, Government, IO Impotency, Law Enforcement, Military, Officers Call
Robert David STEELE Vivas

It is difficult for any intelligent moral citizen to stand by and watch their country self-destruct.  Between the ideological idiots on the extreme right and the mere idiots on the extreme left, America is in a pickle.  Elsewhere I have posited a solution for 2012.

Here I am obliged, from a sense of duty to the Republic that has been betrayed by our serving flag officers and senior executives, to point to and then demolish a book that is beneath contempt among real professionals, but all the rage among the loosely-educated and macho-shit crowd–this sadly includes a number of ranking Special Operations Force (SOF) officers that should know better.  It came out in early 2010 and crap from this book is now making the rounds among the wing-nuts of the right and the uniformed officers that have never actually done any form of successful clandestine intelligence or counterintelligence.  I refer to Courting Disaster: How the CIA Kept America Safe and How Barack Obama is Inviting the Next Attack.

Here is a copy of the garbage that is circulating now via email among military officers:

Setting the Record Straight: Courting Disaster, by Marc Thiessen

And now to set the record straight for honest folk:

Continue reading “Robert Steele: Waterboarding Morons — A Social Cancer”

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Theophilis Goodyear: Russia’s Chief Military Officer on Nuclear War Soon

04 Inter-State Conflict, 06 Russia, 10 Security, Cultural Intelligence, IO Deeds of War, Military
Think?

Russian military chief: War risks have grown

Associated Press, 17 November 2011

MOSCOW (AP) — Russia's chief military officer says the nation is facing an increased threat of being drawn into conflicts at its borders that may grow into an all-out nuclear war.

Gen. Nikolai Makarov, chief of the General Staff, pointed at NATO's expansion eastward and said Thursday that the risks for Russia to be pulled into local conflicts have “risen sharply.” He added, according to Russian news agencies wires, that “under certain conditions local and regional conflicts may develop into a full-scale war involving nuclear weapons.”

Read more.