How Crisis Mapping Proved Henry Kissinger Wrong in Cambodia
Crisis Mapping can reveal insights on current crises as well as crises from decades ago. Take Dr. Jen Ziemke‘s dissertation research on crisis mapping the Angolan civil war, which revealed and explained patterns of violence against civilians. My colleague Dr. Taylor Owen recently shared with me his fascinating research, which comprises a spatio-historical analysis of the US bombardment of Cambodia. Like Jen’s research, Taylor’s clearly shows how crisis mapping can shed new light on important historical events.
. . . . . . .
In particular, Owen’s analysis shows that:
Click on Image to Enlarge
“… the total tonnage dropped on Cambodia was five times greater than previously known; the bombing inside Cambodia began nearly 4 years prior to the supposed start of the Menu Campaign, under the Johnson Administration; that, in contradiction to Henry Kissinger’s claims, and over the warning of the Joints Chiefs of Staff, Base Areas 704, 354 and 707 were all heavily bombed; the bombing intensity increased throughout the summer of 1973, after Congress barred any such increase; and, that despite claims by both Kissinger and Nixon to the contrary, there was substantial bombing within 1km of inhabited villages.”
Phi Beta Iota: This is very exciting stuff. The public does not read nor think well, in large part because the rote “teaching” was designed by Carnegie and Rockfeller to create obedient factory workers able to follow instructions. Visualization–including spatio-historical analysis but also including advanced visualization as well as the simple visualization for flag officers (red, yellow, green), could be the next revolution in education. At a minimum it will demonstrate that experts know nothing and elites cannot be trusted.
21st Century Network Governance – Beyond Participatory Budgeting
Participatory budgeting is a very important step in the right direction, but in the larger context of both obstacles presented by corrupt governance and what is possible enabled by the Internet, it can be taken–quickly–to a higher level.
Participatory budgeting is also somewhat ineffective in that the false assumption of the public and private sectors are accepted. True Cost Economics is the only possible foundation for a sustainable public sector and a sustainable private sector, and most participatory budgeting projects have no idea what the difference is between the false budget and the true budget. To discuss budget disposition without seeing, for example, that fracking creates earthquakes and that tar sands consume vast quantities of potable water, is an exercise in futility.
This session will present a very rapid 30 minute overview of the pioneering work done by Earth Intelligence Network, a 501c3 with 24 co-founders including Medard Gabel (co-creator with Buckminster Fuller of the analog World Game, designer of the current digital EarthGame). Three integral foundations for effective collective intelligence will be introduced:
Robert Steele
a. Strategic Analytic Model highlighting the ten high-level threats to humanity ignored by most governments and the twelve core policy areas from Agriculture to Water that are not harmonized by most governments
b. Six Bubbles consisting of an Autonomous Internet connecting an Earth Intelligence (Decision-Support) Network, EarthGame, EarthPolicy, and EarthBudget, all glued together with transpartisan memetics and transitional facilitation. Illustration
c. M4IS2, the new craft of intelligence, no longer secret, expensive or federal–Multinational, Multiagency, Multidisciplinary, Multidomain Information Sharing and Sense Making unites the eight tribes of intelligence (academia, civil society, commerce, government, law enforcement, media, military, non-government / non-profit) to harmonize decisions, policies, budgets, and behavior across all boundaries, by using shared information to achieve shared objectives.
Following the 30 minute illustrated presentation, two discussants will expand on the possibilities, one from a government perspective and the other from a civil society perspective.
The final 30 minutes will be devoted to interactive questions and answers.
It is our hope that the entire session can be video-taped and streamed online for permanent public access.
Robert David STEELE Vivas
Robert David STEELE Vivas, CEO of Earth Intelligence Network (501c3), has spent 30 years in the intelligence (decision-support) field, and the last twenty helping ninety governments get a grip on open sources of information to create Open Source Intelligence (OSINT). His second book, THE NEW CRAFT OF INTELLIGENCE: Personal, Public, & Political (2002, also free online) remains the primer for public intelligence in the public interest. He is also the originator of the concept of the Smart Nation, first published in Government Information Quarterly in 1995, and then in THE SMART NATION ACT: Public Intelligence in the Public Interest(EIN, 2006). He is a former spy, an honorary hacker associated with Hackers on Planet Earth (HOPE), the Silicon Valley Hackers Conference (as started by Stewart Brand), and Hactic / Chaos Computer Club in Europe. He is also the #1 Amazon reviewer for non-fiction, reading in 98 categories, with all of his reviewed accessible online by category at Phi Beta Iota the Public Intelligence Blog. In October he presented his Electoral Reform proposal to Occupy NYC, the six minute video someone else posted went viral. He is one of three candidates for the Reform Party presidential nomination, and has created a web site, We the People Reform Coalition, that represents the next level in participatory governance, integrating Electoral Reform, a Coalition Cabinet and Balanced Budget that are crowd-sourced and presented in advance of election day, and a commitment to True Cost Economics. In June 2012 Random House / Evolver Editions is releasing his newest book, THE OPEN SOURCE EVERYTHING MANIFESTO: Transparency, Truth, & Trust.
The Murdoch papers are carrying a new version of the bin Laden saga. This one contains much of the fiction of the last 25, leaving out much as well. Nothing is new, just a set of lies with some reason for them to be retold. We know what that reason is, nobody takes a word of it seriously anymore, not the first stories, not the sea burial, not the execution of the world’s most valuable intelligence asset.
Big Bat USA: 4% of the force (the infantry) takes 80% of the casualties and receives 1% of the budget. This FACT alone gives the lie to all of the above pontifications. Both the US Government and the US media are inept and misrepresenting reality to the American people. 99% of the Pentagon budget is fraud, waste, and abuse–the policy is based on ideology rather than reality; acquisition is broken–we simply transfer money from the taxpayer to the corporations without thinking about it; and operations are mostly theater. We do not have a strategy–we have a collection of criminally insane people posturing for the public and getting away with it. For those who lived through the same thing in the 1970′s, remember the movie King of Hearts? There are only two candidates that are both informed and honest on this matter: Ron Paul and Robert Steele.
Jobs offshoring, financial deregulation, and ten years of wars have severely damaged the US economy and the economic prospects of 90% of the American population. The signs are everywhere in front of our eyes. They are in the income distribution data, the BLS jobs data, the Census data, the poverty figures, and the high number of food stamp recipients.
The signs are in the foreclosed and boarded up homes and the accompanying homelessness. They are in closed strip malls, in office building, warehouse, and shopping mall vacancies, and in the huge population losses of America’s manufacturing cities.
. . . . . .
As the US government is controlled by financial and armaments interests and not by the people, the government responded to the financial crisis by shoveling more debt and more hardships on the American people in order that financial interests did not have to
pay for their own mistakes and crimes. Instead of blaming the responsible parties, “our” government handed the bill to the American people.
Recognizing that the society has become complex suggests that the truth about social issues, public interest or common good is not a single truth, but rather that there are a variety of well-founded and equally valid truths that must co-exist and be reconciled by human deliberation. Social complexity means there are different views about the most important issues in a society. Socially complex issues share no common denominator; different views must be embraced as in relation rather than in opposition.
Recognition of social complexity—and the impoverished political simplicity no longer adequate to its charter—has important consequences for how we go about understanding of social issues. This in turn determinates our future aspirations and approach to social struggles regarding how we want to collectively re-construct sociality. Put bluntly, Industrial-Era politics have failed, and new methods must be found to achieve political reconciliation among agonistic perspectives. There is no more hope for complete unity and consensus in principal social concerns. But these concerns are few and abstract. Everyday life is not lived in abstract world. The matter of everyday life is hybrid, ephemeral and so of “minor importance” to everybody.
