Cultural Intelligence – Page 568 – Public Intelligence Blog

2014/05/082014/05/08

John Robb: Ukraine, Putin, and Open Source Warfare: In the 21st Century, Warfare is business by other means.

04 Inter-State Conflict, 05 Civil War, 10 Transnational Crime, Commercial Intelligence, Cultural Intelligence

Putin and Open Source Warfare

Is Putin using open source warfare?

Of course he is. Who sold him on the approach? Apparently, he has an advisor called Vladislav Surkov who is a science fiction writer. He recently wrote a short story (published under his nom de guerre) called “Without the Sky” about a many vs. many war. A type of warfare very familiar to readers of Brave New War.

“This was the first non-linear war. In primitive wars of the nineteenth, twentieth and other Middle Ages fought usually two sides. Two nations or two temporary union. Now faced four coalition. And is not that two on two. Or three against one. No. All against all. And what were the coalition! Not like before. Rare state included in them entirely. Sometimes, several provinces were on one side, some on the other, and any city or generation, or gender, or professional community of the same state – the third. Then they could change its position. Go to whatever site. “

In other words a swirling “bazaar of violence.” The author and TV producer Peter Pomerantsev also sees a connection between this approach an a corporatist view of the world. A world where “corporate raiding” can now be accomplished by states and the raids can be violent. I see that too.

In the 21st Century, warfare isn't politics by other means.

Warfare is business by other means.

PS: I wrote some interesting scenarios depicting economic warfare against Russia as a means of defeating it bloodlessly back in 2004.

2014/05/08

SchwartzReport: War

03 Economy, 06 Family, 07 Health, 07 Other Atrocities, 10 Security, 10 Transnational Crime, 11 Society, Commerce, Commercial Intelligence, Corruption, Cultural Intelligence, Government, Officers Call, Peace Intelligence

The War on Drugs has always been a charade, a flashy story to get the rubes riled up, whose real purpose was to justify increased law enforcement budgets, prison budgets, judiciary budgets, and inflated corporate profits for all the technology this bogus war involves. It has been a disaster at every level of social policy, albeit ever so profitable.

Group of Nobel Prize Winners Warns: The ‘War on Drugs’ has Failed
Agence France-Presse (France)/The Raw Story

The global ‘war on drugs” has been a catastrophic failure and world leaders must rethink their approach, a group including five Nobel Prize-winning economists, Britain’s deputy prime minister and a former U.S. secretary of state said Tuesday.

An academic report published by the London School of Economics (LSE) called ‘Ending the Drug Wars” pointed to violence in Afghanistan, Latin America and other regions as evidence of the need for a new approach.

2014/05/072014/05/07

Tikkun Rabbi Michael Turner: What Do the Suicides of Fifty-Year-Old Men Reveal? Public Health Emergency Exposes Economic and Existential Crisis

03 Economy, 06 Family, 07 Health, 07 Other Atrocities, 11 Society, Cultural Intelligence

What Do the Suicides of Fifty-Year-Old Men Reveal?

The Public Health Emergency Exposes an Economic and Existential Crisis

Margaret Morganroth Gullette

Tikkun, Spring 2014

ver the past decade of devastating recession and feeble recovery, there has been a sharp rise in suicides of men aged fifty and over — almost 50 percent, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. From 1999 to 2010, rates of suicide overall have gone up, but the steepest rise was for midlife men: those who used to be thought of as prime-age workers at the peak of their experience and ability. In that decade, the suicide rates for men aged fifty to fifty-four rose from 20.6 per 100,000 to 30.7 per 100,000.

Read full article.

2014/05/072014/05/07

Anthony Judge: Identification of Bullets – Human Right and Human Responsibility?

04 Inter-State Conflict, 05 Civil War, 07 Health, 07 Other Atrocities, 09 Justice, 10 Security, 11 Society, Cultural Intelligence, Peace Intelligence

Phi Beta Iota: We identify food that kills people — and demand it be taken off the market. Should we do the same with bullets?

Identification of Bullets: human right and human responsibility?

Introduction

Much is made of the implications of the arms trade and the spread of weapons, notably manufactured by the permanent members of the United Nations Security Council. This has become a fact of life and is accepted as such.

Curiously it is less evident whose weapons are used in the final killing of individuals in combat — especially the weapons used “illegally” by insurgents. The following is a brief exploration of the possibility of identifying who supplied the bullet which finally entered the body of the person maimed or killed.

Does the person so wounded — or the relatives of those killed — have the right to know who produced the bullet? Is this a fundamental human right or a matter of human responsibility?

Whereas not many years ago it would have been considered ridiculous to sell fruit individually identified by marks enabling their precise origin to be determined — even to the person who packed them — such labelling is now commonplace. The argument is that in the event of a threat to health associated with the product, whether fruit or other consumer products, responsibility can be precisely established. Such labelling may be a requirement governing import of foreign products.

If precise labelling can be justified for sources of life-giving human nourishment, because of their potential threat to health, is there not a case for denitrifying those products intended as a means of incapacitating individuals, possibly terminally? Do relatives have a right to the bullet by which a loved one was killed?

More generally is it appropriate to be able to indicate, with as much details as possible, who was responsible for the manufacture of the bullet? Should the bullets used in insurgency operations be a matter of public knowledge?

Fruit identification as a precedent

Continue reading “Anthony Judge: Identification of Bullets – Human Right and Human Responsibility?”

2014/05/072014/05/07

Michael Ostrolenk: Cyberlibertarians’ Digital Deletion of the Left

Cultural Intelligence

Cyberlibertarians’ Digital Deletion of the Left

David Golumbia

David Golumbia is an assistant professor of English at Virginia Commonwealth University and author of The Cultural Logic of Computation.

Jacobin, 4 December 2013

Technological innovation does not inherently promote the Left’s goals.

The digital revolution, we are told everywhere today, produces democracy. It gives “power to the people” and dethrones authoritarians; it levels the playing field for distribution of information critical to political engagement; it destabilizes hierarchies, decentralizes what had been centralized, democratizes what was the domain of elites.

Most on the Left would endorse these ends. The widespread availability of tools whose uses are harmonious with leftist goals would, one might think, accompany broad advancement of those goals in some form. Yet the Left today is scattered, nearly toothless in most advanced democracies. If digital communication technology promotes leftist values, why has its spread coincided with such a stark decline in the Left’s political fortunes?

Part of this disconnect between advancing technology and a retreating left can be explained by the advent of cyberlibertarianism, a view that widespread computerization naturally produces democracy and freedom.

Continue reading “Michael Ostrolenk: Cyberlibertarians' Digital Deletion of the Left”

2014/05/072014/05/07

Jean Lievens: Indigenous Economy & Ethical Work in Ecuador

Civil Society, Commerce, Commercial Intelligence, Cultural Intelligence, Ethics

Indigenous Economy & Ethical Work in Ecuador – Dissertation Reviews

From dissertationreviews.org – May 6, 10:43 AM

Drawing on a range of personal experiences and ethnographic fieldwork conducted over a number of years, Kristine Latta’s Merchant Moralities is a detailed and sympathetic account of the moral predicaments faced by Otavalo’s indigenous comerciantes/merchants. Working with Otavaleño communities, indigenous leaders, family members and friends, Latta explores life as it unfolds in and around the town itself, in family homes in the community of Peguche, and also on travels within the United States. Through careful descriptions, we learn of the particular transformations and vulnerabilities that these entrepreneurs face, as they engage in the decidedly transnational textile and tourism industries. These transformations coincide with actions elsewhere associated with a revalorization of indigeneity – both in localised spaces and particular cultural practices, and also more broadly on the national political stage. What can the distinct moral experiences of Otavalo’s merchants tell us more broadly about the dynamics of cultural change, the recalibration of tradition, and the complexities of contemporary indigenous experience? Focusing on people’s responses to shifts in priorities and contested commitments, we see how merchants articulate their own entrepreneurial values as personalised expressions of indigeneity, and do so amidst the novel opportunities and conspicuous disparities that their livelihoods create.

2014/05/072014/05/07

Berto Jongman: Rise in Global Political Violence Challenges Supply Chains — True Cost of Predatory Capitalism Becomes Visible

Civil Society, Commerce, Commercial Intelligence, Corruption, Cultural Intelligence, Government, Peace Intelligence

Example of true cost: corruption plus public abuse = political violence = cost to predatory capitalism.

Rise in global political violence challenges supply chains

Supply Management, 7 May 2014 | Will Green

Levels of conflict and political violence have increased in 48 countries over the past six months and created “significant challenges to supply chains”, according to a report.

Maplecroft’s biannual Conflict and Political Violence Index showed Ukraine moved 52 places to become the 35^th most at risk country following its uprising and the threat of Russian intervention, while 16 countries are rated as “extreme risk”.

These include the Central African Republic, South Sudan, Somalia, Democratic Republic of Congo and Libya, while Syria remains the country with the highest levels of conflict and political violence.

Many key growth markets feature in the “high” and “extreme” risk categories, including Colombia (11), Nigeria (15), Philippines (17), India (18), Bangladesh (21), Thailand (23), China (25), Indonesia (29) and Turkey (31).

Continue reading “Berto Jongman: Rise in Global Political Violence Challenges Supply Chains — True Cost of Predatory Capitalism Becomes Visible”