Category: Cultural Intelligence

Posted on

Kickstart the Freedom Box–Micro-Giving Rocks!

07 Other Atrocities, About the Idea, Augmented Reality, Autonomous Internet, Civil Society, Collective Intelligence, Counter-Oppression/Counter-Dictatorship Practices, Cultural Intelligence, Ethics, Key Players, Peace Intelligence
Click Here to See & Be

As of today, 29 February 2011:

806

Backers

$73,599

pledged of $60,000 goal

18

days to go

Phi Beta Iota: Along with OpenBTS, SolarOne, VECTOR, and “Buy This Satellite,” Freedom Box joins the vanguard of the global revolution.  “Connected, We Are One.”  [Connexum Sumus Unum–scholarly check welcomed].  Please give as generously as you can, this is the non-violent equivalent of Bunker Hill in the global war against corruption and the many attrocities associated with repression of diversity and dissent.

Posted on

TAKE INITIATIVE–Design the World, Don’t Edit It…

11 Society, About the Idea, Advanced Cyber/IO, Collective Intelligence, Cultural Intelligence, Earth Intelligence

Seth Godin Home

Who will say go?

Here's a little-spoken truth learned via crowdsourcing:

Most people don't believe they are capable of initiative.

Initiating a project, a blog, a wikipedia article, a family journey. Initiating something even when you're not putatitively in charge.

At the same time, almost all people believe they are capable of editing, giving feedback or merely criticizing.

So finding people to fix your typos is easy.

A few people are vandals, happy to anonymously attack or add graffiti or useless noise.

If your project depends on individuals to step up and say, “This is what I believe, here is my plan, here is my original thought, here is my tribe,” then you need to expect that most people will see that offer and decline to take it.

Most of the edits on Wikipedia are tiny. Most of the tweets among the billions that go by are reactions or possibly responses, not initiatives. Q&A sites flourish because everyone knows how to ask a question, and many feel empowered to answer it, if it's specific enough. Little tiny steps, not intellectual leaps or risks.

I have a controversial belief about this: I don't think the problem has much to do with the innate ability to initiate. I think it has to do with believing that it's possible and acceptable for you to do it. We've only had these doors open wide for a decade or so, and most people have been brainwashed into believing that their job is to copyedit the world, not to design it. [Emphasis Added.]

There's a huge shortage… a shortage of people who will say go.

Continue reading “TAKE INITIATIVE–Design the World, Don't Edit It…”

Posted on

Foreign Policy Slanders Sy Hersh–Loses Its Integrity

07 Other Atrocities, 09 Justice, Analysis, Corruption, Cultural Intelligence, IO Sense-Making, Journalism/Free-Press/Censorship, Media, Misinformation & Propaganda
(from left to right) Tom Ricks of Foreign Policy magazine and The Washington Post, along with fellow FP editors Joshua Keating and Blake Hounshell all rushed to discredit Hersh and the contents of his January 17th, 2011 speech.

Pulitzer Prize Winner Seymour Hersh And The Men Who Want Him Committed

By Matthew Phelan on February 23, 2011

WhoWhatWhy: Forensic Journalism

It seems unusual for a staid, respected publication (one that has received three National Magazine Awards in just this past decade) to start treating a celebrated journalist (who himself has won two National Magazine Awards in just this past decade) as if he were nothing more than a paranoid crank.

It seems unusual, but it’s exactly what the staff of Foreign Policy has done to Seymour Hersh, following a lecture the venerated reporter gave at Georgetown University’s campus in Doha, Qatar. You may know Hersh as the dogged investigator who exposed the My Lai Massacre during Vietnam. You may know him as the staff writer for The New Yorker who published some of the earliest pieces on Abu Ghraib in May 2004. You might even know him as the man derided and then vindicated for claiming that Dick Cheney was running a secret assassination squad right out of the Vice President’s office. (In truth, the squad was and is a bipartisan affair, initiated under Clinton and still operative under Obama.)  Read more….

Phi Beta Iota: Sy Hersh is as honest as it gets.  Foreign Policy used to be a reputable, imaginative endeavor.  This is now the second time it has been disreputable and ignorant.  Inquiry has established that Moises Naim, the extraordinary editor who took Foreign Policy from nothing to being twice as good as Foreign Affairs, has moved to other duties within the Carnegie Endowment, and it is clear to us that with his departure, Foreign Policy has lost its integrity as well as its intelligence.

Posted on

Secrecy News: CIA Culture In Detail

07 Other Atrocities, 10 Security, Analysis, Corruption, Cultural Intelligence, Government, Intelligence (government), Officers Call, Secrecy & Politics of Secrecy

Amazon Page

LONG STRANGE JOURNEY: A WHISTLEBLOWER'S TALE

In the vast literature of intelligence-related memoirs, the new book Long Strange Journey by Patrick G. Eddington stands out in several ways.

Eddington entered the intelligence arena as an imagery analyst for the CIA's National Photographic Intelligence Center.  Imagery analysis is a predominately technical activity and is not normally considered a hotbed of intrigue or controversy.  Nor has it been widely featured in the intelligence “literature of discontent.”  Eddington provides an introduction to the world of light tables, mensuration and the now-defunct world of the NPIC analyst.

Then Eddington himself defies easy stereotyping.  As an Army veteran, a political conservative, and a person of faith, he might have been voted least likely to rock the boat and to become a whistleblower.  But that's what he did.
Continue reading “Secrecy News: CIA Culture In Detail”

Posted on

Guest Post: Analysis of the Global Insurrection Against Neo-Liberal Economic Domination and the Coming American Rebellion

01 Agriculture, 01 Poverty, 03 Economy, 06 Family, 07 Other Atrocities, 08 Wild Cards, 09 Justice, 10 Transnational Crime, 11 Society, Commerce, Commercial Intelligence, Corruption, Counter-Oppression/Counter-Dictatorship Practices, Cultural Intelligence, Government, Money, Banks & Concentrated Wealth

Guest Post: Analysis of the Global Insurrection Against Neo-Liberal Economic Domination and the Coming American Rebellion

Tyler Durden's picture

Submitted by Tyler Durden on 02/26/2011 20:53 -0500

If you think what’s happening in Egypt won’t happen within the United States, you’ve been watching too much TV. The statistics speak for themselves.

Join The MovementIn previous Revolution Roundups, before we were knocked offline, we featured mass protests by the people of Ireland, Italy, Britain, Austria, Greece, France and Portugal, as the Global Insurrection contagion spread throughout Europe. And now, as we have seen over the past month, North African and Middle Eastern nations have joined the movement as the people of Egypt, Tunisia, Jordan, Morocco, Gabon, Mauritania, Yemen, Bahrain, Libya, Palestine, Iraq, Sudan and Algeria have taken to the streets en masse.

The connection between this latest round of uprisings and the prior protests throughout Europe is one the mainstream media is not making. We are witnessing a decentralized global rebellion against Neo-Liberal economic imperialism. While each national uprising has its own internal characteristics, each one, at its core, is about the rising costs of living and lack of financial opportunity and security. Throughout the world the situation is the same: increasing levels of unemployment and poverty, as price inflation on food and basic necessities is soaring.

Whether national populations realize it or not, these uprisings are against systemic global economic policies that are strategically designed to exploit the working class, reduce living standards, increase personal debt and create severe inequalities of wealth. These global uprising, which have only just begun, are the first wave of the inevitable reaction to the implementation of a centralized worldwide Neo-Feudal economic order.

The global banking cartel, centered at the IMF, World Bank and Federal Reserve, have paid off politicians and dictators the world over — from Washington to Greece to Egypt. In country after country, they have looted national economies at the expense of local populations, consolidating wealth in unprecedented fashion – the top economic one-tenth of one percent is currently holding over $40 trillion in investible wealth, not counting an equally significant amount of wealth hidden in offshore accounts.  Read More….

Tip of the Hat to Contributing Editor Jock Gill for the link.

See Also:

Continue reading “Guest Post: Analysis of the Global Insurrection Against Neo-Liberal Economic Domination and the Coming American Rebellion”

Posted on

Bahraini Freedom Contagion Rattles Saudi Arabia

07 Other Atrocities, 08 Wild Cards, 10 Security, 11 Society, Civil Society, Collective Intelligence, Corruption, Counter-Oppression/Counter-Dictatorship Practices, Cultural Intelligence, Peace Intelligence
Chuck Spinney Recommends....

Weekend Edition February 25 – 26, 2011

A Jittery GCC: Bahrain and the “Freedom Contagion”

By RANNIE AMIRI, Counterpunch

“Saudi Arabia did not build a causeway to Bahrain just so that Saudis could party on weekends. It was designed for moments like this, for keeping Bahrain under control.”

– Dr. Toby Jones, expert on Saudi Arabia at Rutgers University

If Saudi Arabia was rattled by the fall of former Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak, they will be in convulsions should Bahrain’s monarchy collapse. By all indications, the five other member nations of the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) (Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and United Arab Emirates) will go to all lengths to prevent it.

The Arab world’s “freedom contagion” is rapidly spreading. Bahrain’s revolt is being spearheaded by the country’s poor, disenfranchised Shia Muslim majority. Although Mubarak was deposed by a nation of 80 million, unrest in the tiny island kingdom of only 530,000 citizens poses a greater ostensible threat to the GCC, particularly Saudi Arabia and its own sizable, restive Shia minority.

See Also:

REVOLUTION 2.0 Awakening 2012