Cultural Intelligence – Page 840 – Public Intelligence Blog

2011/08/252011/08/25

John Steiner: American Taliban Gathers for Home War

07 Other Atrocities, 11 Society, Civil Society, Corruption, Cultural Intelligence, InfoOps (IO), IO Deeds of War, IO Impotency, Power Behind-the-Scenes/Special Interests

FYI…From two friends…

As someone who once took an oath in the military to protect the Constitution against all enemies, foreign and domestic, I have to wonder why a group that preaches taking over the government using “spiritual warfare” isn't a domestic enemy. Where is the line between freedom of religious expression and sedition?

The New Apostolic Reformation

The Evangelicals Engaged In Spiritual Warfare

National Public Radio, 24 august 2011

An emerging Christian movement that seeks to take dominion over politics, business and culture in preparation for the end times and the return of Jesus, is becoming more of a presence in American politics. The leaders are considered apostles and prophets, gifted by God for this role.

. . . . . .

Tabachnick says the movement currently works with a variety of politicians and has a presence in all 50 states. It also has very strong opinions about the direction it wants the country to take. For the past several years, she says, the NAR has run a campaign to reclaim what it calls the “seven mountains of culture” from demonic influence. The “mountains” are arts and entertainment; business; family; government; media; religion; and education.

“They teach quite literally that these ‘mountains' have fallen under the control of demonic influences in society,” says Tabachnick. “And therefore, they must reclaim them for God in order to bring about the kingdom of God on Earth. … The apostles teach what's called ‘strategic level spiritual warfare' [because they believe that the] reason why there is sin and corruption and poverty on the Earth is because the Earth is controlled by a hierarchy of demons under the authority of Satan. So they teach not just evangelizing souls one by one, as we're accustomed to hearing about. They teach that they will go into a geographic region or a people group and conduct spiritual-warfare activities in order to remove the demons from the entire population. This is what they're doing that's quite fundamentally different than other evangelical groups.”

Read full summary….

2011/08/252011/08/25

Howard Rheingold: Editors Matter More in Cyberspace

04 Education, 11 Society, Advanced Cyber/IO, Blog Wisdom, Civil Society, Cultural Intelligence, Ethics, Media

Infotention

“Managing attention & information”

Created and curated by Howard Rheingold

Accessibility Vs. Access: The Filter Bubble And Human Information Curation | Maria Popova On Nieman Lab

Human-driven information curation is the antidote to this algorithmic disconnect between access and accessibility:

The primary purpose of an editor [is] to extend the horizon of what people are interested in and what people know. Giving people what they think they want is easy, but it’s also not very satisfying: the same stuff, over and over again. Great editors are like great matchmakers: they introduce people to whole new ways of thinking, and they fall in love.

Chuck Spinney: Richard Falk on USG Learning Disability

03 Economy, 04 Inter-State Conflict, 05 Civil War, 07 Other Atrocities, 08 Wild Cards, 10 Security, Corruption, Counter-Oppression/Counter-Dictatorship Practices, Cultural Intelligence, Director of National Intelligence et al (IC), DoD, Government, IO Deeds of War, Journalism/Free-Press/Censorship, Misinformation & Propaganda, Officers Call, Power Behind-the-Scenes/Special Interests

Reasoning by analogy is powerful, but dangerous for of thinking. Einstein, for example, showed how reasoning by analogy can unleash stunning insights , but only when properly tempered by critical observation, testing, and systematic analysis, can analogical insights lead to brilliant syntheses that literally change our view of reality.

But that benefit comes with a heavy price, because this kind of reasoning is also a very dangerous way to think. Analogies can capture the imagination and thereby bias the Orientation of less disciplined thinkers and decision makers to distort and twist their Observations into a vision of reality the Observer/Decision Maker wants to see. In so doing, the distorted Orientation takes decision maker off the cliff by disconnecting his Actions from the real world. And … for every Einstein with a highly disciplined Observation – Orientation – Decision Action loop, there are thousands of crackpots, nutcases, and charlatans trying to sell their visions of “what is” to sell their pre-concieved views of appropriate decisions and actions of action.

In the below essay, Richard Falk offers a good example of reasoning by analogy done properly. He carefully crafts and explains a limited set of parallels between the January 1968 Tet Offensive in Viet Nam to Obama's dilemma in Afghanistan. CS

The Tet Offensive's parallels to Afghanistan

The United States should learn from mistakes it made during the Vietnam War and withdraw from Afghanistan.

EXTRACTS:

Continue reading “Chuck Spinney: Richard Falk on USG Learning Disability”

2011/08/242011/08/30

Steven Howard Johnson: Reflections on OSINT

Advanced Cyber/IO, Blog Wisdom, Budgets & Funding, Collective Intelligence, Communities of Practice, Cultural Intelligence, Ethics, Hacking, InfoOps (IO), Intelligence (government), Methods & Process, Open Government, Policies, Resilience, Strategy, Threats

Steve Howard Johnson — Steven Howard Johnson

Phi Beta Iota: Mr. Johnson is the author of Integrity at Scale, free online, whose many ideas are being integrated into the vision for a Smart Nation Act and the hub of the Smart Nation, an Open Source Agency and global Multinational, Multiagency, Multidisciplinary, Multidomain Information-Sharing and Sense-Making (M4IS2) network of networks. He is a party to the on-going push to establish the Open Source Agency and create a more competent and ethical America.

– – – – – – -BEGIN REFLECTIONS- – – – – – –

As I look at the Open Source idea, I find myself experiencing a fair amount of dissonance between a methodological vision of open source intelligence, at one level, and at a very different level, an aspirational vision that sees it as a way of disinfecting a misguided and corrupt set of bureaucracies.

One mission is potentially endorsable by the powers-that-be. The second mission is not. Ask people to endorse both and it isn’t likely that either will move forward. If corruption prevention is to be the mission, the open source agency will have to find a home outside of government. If transparency of intelligence is the mission, then perhaps it can find a home inside government.

My second source of dissonance has to do with design and scale. Open source intelligence is potentially as vast as all the server farms Google will ever own. How does a relatively modest site, squeezed in between State and Watergate, ever acquire the heft to handle the challenge? The scope of the mission and the scope of the agency seem out of sync with the scope of the real estate footprint.

Continue reading “Steven Howard Johnson: Reflections on OSINT”

2011/08/232011/08/23

Chuck Spinney: Karzai Cornered, US Into the Quagmire

03 Economy, 04 Inter-State Conflict, 05 Civil War, 07 Other Atrocities, 08 Wild Cards, 10 Security, Corruption, Cultural Intelligence, Government, IO Deeds of War, Military, Peace Intelligence

Karzai Cornered

Rediff 08/22/2011

By M K Bhadrakumar

EXTRACT:

The US expectation that the Taliban would learn to live with the American occupation in their lust for power in Kabul is far-fetched and can only be seen as wishful thinking.

. . . . . .

Equally, the ‘hidden agenda’ of the US invasion of Afghanistan can no longer be disowned. Quite obviously, the US intends to plunge into the ‘great game’ in Central Asia.

Read full article….

Phi Beta Iota: This is absolutely worth a complete read. The US is, as the author suggests, delusional in thinking the Taliban is going to put up with a US presence beyond this winter. The US has sentenced Karzai to death, and may well lose another 1,000 troops to body bags before the public has its “Tet Offensive” wake-up. There is nothing in Central Asia worth blood, spirit, and treasure–what is there is vastly over-stated in relation to what could be gained by refocusing on rebuilding America from inside out. This is a study in corruption across the legislative and executive branches of the US Government.

2011/08/232011/08/24

DefDog: A Gandhi Model Galvanizes India on Anti-Corruption

Cultural Intelligence, Peace Intelligence

The power of peace…..

A Gandhi Model Galvanizes India

Fasting, White-Clothed Hazare Was Tapped by Anticorruption Activists Looking for an Icon to Put Spirit Back in Fight

By AMOL SHARMA And KRISHNA POKHAREL

Wall Street Journal, 23 August 2011

NEW DELHI—Last fall, a group of leading anticorruption activists in India had reached a dead end. Their appeals to authorities to crack down on graft after a wave of high-profile scandals were going unheeded. They needed a figurehead to galvanize the masses and shame the government into action.

One of the activists traveled to a rural outpost in western India to enlist Kisan “Anna” Hazare, a military veteran best known for turning a village that was stricken by drought and hooked on alcohol into a model of economic development. In Mr. Hazare, the movement tapped a leader whose austere lifestyle and history of nonviolent protests, including fasts, recalled the spirit and tactics of modern India's most iconic founding father, Mohandas “Mahatma” Gandhi.

In the ensuing months, Mr. Hazare has achieved much of what his backers hoped, harnessing Indians' rage and disgust over corruption to create an unprecedented standoff between civil society and the government.

Cynthia McKinney: Libya Round-Up 23 August 2011

03 Economy, 05 Energy, 08 Wild Cards, 12 Water, Advanced Cyber/IO, Civil Society, Corruption, Cultural Intelligence, Government, IO Deeds of War, Military, Misinformation & Propaganda

From Don DBar on behalf of Cynthia McKinney.

Battle for Tripoli not yet over as Gaddafi loyalists strike back

Washington Post, 22 August 2011

KPFA's Davey D interviews Don DeBar about the real on-the-ground situation in Tripoli.

This PressTV bit with me was recorded at 2:30 pm New York time yesterday (22 Aug 2011). At that time, I questioned the veracity of the claimed capture of Gadaffi's sons and of rebel control of the city of Tripoli. It turns out I was right.

No, I don't have a crystal ball – just good contacts on the ground who don't lie or hold their tongues when they see horrible wrong being done. NATO – that's Obama to the apologists – has done everything to keep this information from you, but the truth will out!

. . . . . . .

Libya Coverage Provides a Peek Behind the Curtain

Don DeBar at www.warisacrime.org

. . . . . . .

Interview on Costs of War on Sahar TV

Phi Beta Iota: US Information Operations (IO) includes Pyschological Operations (PSYOP, now under a new name, same mindset, which is to deceive rather than to promulgate the truth). It has improved since its signal success in sending Iraqi troops home rather than having to deal with their surrender. What we are seeing in relation to Libya, apart from the impeachable crimes of pilots, generals, Congress, and the White House, is a major IO/PSYOP campaign that is driven by Wall Street and Big Oil, not by the public interest. Interestingly, this is also the first time that the truth is being crowd-sourced in a moderately effective manner, suggesting that in the future any IO/PSYOP campaign that is less than truthful will be outed in quick time.

Phi Beta Iota: The respective press–those trapped in a hotel in Tripoli and those embedded with the rebels–are seeing only what they are allowed to see. Apart from Patrick Meier, Arno Reuser and a few others, no one is actually putting together “ground truth” based on widely scatted Twitter and other forms of communication. The West sees Libya as oil, water, and gold. The Africa Union has failed to see the urgency of protecting its interest in all three.