Joseph Stiglitz, an economist I admire and would trust as one of several advisers has written a provocative essay, “The Post-Crisis Crisis” (Project Syndicate, 9 January 2013). Here is his opening:
NEW YORK – In the shadow of the euro crisis and America’s fiscal cliff, it is easy to ignore the global economy’s long-term problems. But, while we focus on immediate concerns, they continue to fester, and we overlook them at our peril. The most serious is global warming. While the global economy’s weak performance has led to a corresponding slowdown in the increase in carbon emissions, it amounts to only a short respite. And we are far behind the curve: Because we have been so slow to respond to climate change, achieving the targeted limit of a two-degree (centigrade) rise in global temperature, will require sharp reductions in emissions in the future. Some suggest that, given the economic slowdown, we should put global warming on the backburner. On the contrary, retrofitting the global economy for climate change would help to restore aggregate demand and growth. Read full article.
Joseph is well-intentioned in his focus on global warming and the need to create resilient localities and nations that ut people to work creating green infrastructure, but this is — with all humility — like painting the Titanic before driving it into the iceberg. Cosmetic.
It never occurred to me, when I lost the first bureaucratic battle on Open Source Intelligence (OSINT) in 1992, that my innate sense of integrity [do the right thing] would lead me to resign from the Marine Corps civil service in 1993 as a very young GM-14, and spend not five, not ten, but twenty years wandering in the wilderness helping over 66 governments and over 7,500 mid-career officers get a grip on sources and methods the traditional secret services refused to consider and the traditional consumers of intelligence did not know how to do. Of all my student bodies, the USA was the worst, remaining ignorant at the leadership level, helpless at the follower level–butts in seats, no brain required. Hence, as we approach a historic turning point, the possibility that we might have a Secretary of State and a Secretary of Defense that can actually get a grip on reality together, I thought it might be useful to offer up three things I have learned during my 20-year walk-about:
Robert David STEELE Vivas Click on Image for Personal Page
The Hourglass Strategy: Healing the Americas with Intelligence & Integrity
Robert David STEELE Vivas, CEO, Earth Intelligence Network
Mr. Steele grew up in Latin America, returning as a clandestine case officer, and then going on to teach governments across the region how to leverage Open Source Intelligence (OSINT). He is the #1 Amazon reviewer for non-fiction, reading in 98 categories, and has been described in the media as a serial pioneer and an unsung hero helping create the future. If implemented, ethical evidence-based decision-support becomes the foundation for a completely new innovative and positive OAS in the Americas.
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The USA and the OAS have lost their way. The formation of CELAC (Community of Latin American and Caribbean States) was ignored, just as President Barack Obama ignored the value of the book Open Veins of Latin America when it was given to him by President Hugo Chavez. The seven sins of American foreign policy, beginning with ignorance and ending with arrogance, persist. Meanwhile, in Asia – and reinforcing the future of CELAC – President Obama was politely sent home with a sound rejection of his proposed and obviously predatory Trans-Pacific Partnership; instead, a Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP) is being established. The Western Hemisphere including the Arctic should be but is not Priority One for the USA and OAS. The fact is that the USA and OAS lack a strategy, lack coherent policies, and lack harmonized spending strategies for embracing, nurturing, and devising mutually beneficial diplomatic, informational, military, and economic (DIME) programs. This is a global short-coming best addressed first in relation to the Americas.
[Editor's Note: The World Brain was proposed in collection of essays by H. G. Wells, wherein Wells describes his vision of the world brain: essentially a free, synthetic, universal, authoritative, and permanent “World Encyclopaedia” very much like today's Wikipedia. Wells imagined this resource would help world citizens make the best use of all available human knowledge and could therefore contribute directly to world peace.]
The Need
Four developments converged in 2009 to suggest the end of the industrial era in which treaties and military force were the principal means of governing human affairs;
Brahimi Report calling for a renaissance in UN decision-making and decision-support
There is an urgent need for a new means of hybrid self-governance that reflects the diversity of human interests and capabilities. We are in the Information Era, but the United Nations (UN) and its Members are still “dumb” and unable to harness the distributed intelligence of the Whole Earth. Humanity urgently needs some form of global unified archive system without the current “top down” partitioning and access restrictions, such that all organizations and individuals can contribute their knowledge to a creative commons that leaves no knowledge sidelines, and no fraud undiscovered.
The fragmentation of knowledge, and the gap between people with power and people with knowledge, is the root cause of our universal failure to deal responsibly with the ten high-level threats to humanity.
World Information Summits and Global Knowledge Summits have not addressed the core need: to connect all human minds with one another and with all information in all languages. The UN and its Members cannot be effective in this new era without creating a United Nations Open-Source Decision-Support Information Network (UNODIN) that is “Open” in every possible sense of the word (using open source software and open spectrum, creating open source intelligence), and that allows the harmonization of what the public knows, does, and funds.
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Proposed Solution
A single World Brain Institute with an infinitely-scalable online Global Game (actually a Participatory Planning and Budgeting System at all levels of governance) can be implemented immediately at a cost of under Euro $12 million a year, with the almost certain prospect of being self-funded within three years by selling very low-cost subscriptions to the one billion rich, enabling free access to the five billion poor. The World Brain and a Global Game are not new ideas—what is new is the combination of the desperate need for reliable “whole systems” analytics, and the immediate availability of open and hence affordable and scalable information and communication technologies (ICT) to meet that need.
This program, under UN auspices, would encourage regions to establish Regional Information-Sharing and Sense-Making Networks, and Members to create national call centers harnessing the eight tribes of intelligence in each country (academic, civil society, commerce, government, law enforcement, media, military, and non-governmental or non-profit) and able to educate the poor “one cell call at a time.” The UN could ask for US funding of an Office of the Assistant Secretary for Decision-Support, and create an Office of Information-Sharing Treaties and Agreements at the same time. A Strategic Analytic Model has been devised along with a concept for extending the proven concept of Participatory Budgeting while harnessing all interested humans to digitize “true cost” information on all products, services, and behaviors. This is a self-healing self-learning system with an open ethic that guarantees integrity with transparency. Within the Global Game, a Global Range of Needs Table can connect the one billion rich with the item-level needs of the five billion poor, to include free cells phones connecting the poor to knowledge.
Benefits
A (UN) World Intelligence Center was first proposed by Quincy Wright in 1957, this now-achievable program will ride the emergent wave of evolutionary activism that can potentially bypass blocking industrial-era bureaucracies and enable the poor to create infinite stabilizing wealth. The UN can become the administrator of the World Brain and Global Game™, and in this way harness the distributed intelligence of the Whole Earth while helping all achieve global learning.
Examples
ClimateGate. Hacktivism leads to public outrage as well as renewed voice by scientists who have been ignored and often repressed by the International Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), where 50 core scientists with a strong ideological belief have been able to sway another 150 participating scientists while ignoring over 5,000 dissenting scientists. If a World Brain Institute with an embedded Global Game existed, the Secretary General (SG) would be able to see on a large display a visualization of all scientists as well as public leaders and their relative position—a single institution would not be able to mislead the SG. At the same time the SG and Members would have two other benefits:
1. Climate Change would be presented in relation to ALL ten threats to humanity and in relation to all twelve core policies (Agriculture, Diplomacy, Economy, Education, Energy, Family, Health, Immigration, Justice, Security, Society, Water). It would be understood, in this context, that the social harm to the UN goals of eradicating poverty and infectious disease is greater than the benefit of reducing carbon emission in the poorest of countries, and the misrepresented data could be seen.
2. Intervention strategies could be identified and quickly communicated throughout the world. Wal-Mart, for example, has eliminated $25 million a year in truck idling costs (and the related emissions) by installing small batteries to run truck cabin systems when trucks are not in motion.
Iraq-Afghanistan. It is now clear that the US and UK decisions to invade both IQ and AF were based on ideologically-defined policy preferences, and completely refuted by both secret and public decision support. In the US those of us prepared to pay $100,000 for full-page information advertisements against the war saw our money refused by a captive press. Within the UN, there was no competing voice armed with public information to refute the lies presented to the UN by the US Administration. If a World Brain Institute with an embedded Global Game™ existed, the SG would be able to see on a large display a visualization of all leaders (not just political but religious, economic, and academic) and their relative position—a single government would not be able to mislead the SG. At the same time the SG and Members would have two other benefits:
1. The “true cost” of both invasions could be properly presented to all Members and their publics, and a rich harvest of multi-cultural perspectives factored in—the US leaders for example, were unaware of the Sunni-Shi’ite split in Iraq, or the implications of the Pakistan Sunni nuclear bomb in relation to the Iranian effort to create a nuclear deterrent against Sunnis, not the US or Israel.
2. The legitimate planning concerns of the diplomats and the commercial specialists, as well as the US military officers such as the Chief of Staff of the Army who knew full well the instability that can occur from going in “light,” could have been properly acknowledged, and a multi-national multi-cultural campaign plan developed to leverage the Golden Hour so as not to lose the peace.
Conclusion
The World Brain Institute and Global Game are the means by which the Secretary General can leverage the moral and practical value of “Open Everything,” making it possible to hear all voices, to nurture appreciative inquiry and deliberative dialog at all levels, and to achieve truth & reconciliation across failed states whose poor can be empowered with cell phone connectivity and education “one cell call at a time,” so as to create infinite stabilizing wealth in situ.
Robert David Steele (Vivas) – U.S. Marine Corps infantry and intelligence officer for twenty years. Second-ranking civilian (GS-14) in U.S. Marine Corps Intelligence from 1988 – 1992 and a member of the Adjunct Faculty of Marine Corps University. Also former clandestine services case officer with the CIA. 25-year U.S. military and intelligence career. Currently he is Founder and CEO of OSS.net and a well known proponent of Open Source Intelligence.
Robert David STEELE Vivas Click on Image for Personal Page
Telling the truth to those who have replaced intelligence with ideology and integrity with loyalty to something other than their Republic is most difficult and more often than not will get you fired, because those without integrity tend to be promoted in corrupt systems, and they see clearly the threat to their world-view — and their perks — of someone who persists in pointing out that the truth at any cost reduces all other costs.
Reform can be job and revenue neutral from state to state and district to district — and is of course subject to Congressional oversight via the authorization and appropriations process. Below are seven truths about the US military that I would like to see introduced into the hearings on the confirmation of the next Secretary of Defense, and ideally also tasked to the Congressional Research Service (CRS), where the senior specialist for each of the major services is capable of validating my views.
There is one consideration I would like to discuss with you. While exploring for many years how to address the need for the military to understand all areas and aspects of the human environment, I had the opportunity to listen to many members of the intelligence community speaking about their role in achieving that understanding. I used to have the traditional military idea that it was the role of intel to provide the information and much of the knowledge. Along the way, they got me to doubt this view. Finally, they convinced me that the intel community, as we still know it today, is not a supplier of this understanding, but a customer. Understanding the human environment is a product stemming from Open Sources Information, but not from military intelligence. Intel's role might be, based on the understanding made available by others, to develop the specific products suiting its specific goals : targeting and counter intelligence.
As a general statement, no one nation has put this together — the Mediterranean countries have the skills and mind-set, the Sandanavian countries have the motivation and interest, and the Americans have the money — but the three “sets” are not coming together at this time.
Thank you for all the material you are producing.
Cheers,
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Long Answer with Graphics to Four Part Question Below the Line
