Great article. Much truth here

Great article. Much truth to this. Glad I'm not in today's Modern Action Army.

The latest brilliant thought out of Washington is that the “pilots?” flying remote aircraft in combat areas from their duty station in Nevada or Arizona should draw the same combat pay as those real world pilots actually on board a plane in a hostile environment. The Politically Correct Logic? The remote vehicle operator is subject to the same stress levels as the combat pilot actually flying in combat. REALLY!

There are many who will agree with these sentiments, but they apply to more than just fighter pilots. Unfortunately, the ones with the guts to speak up or push for what they believe in are beat down by the “system”.

Subject: Where Have All The Fighter Pilots Gone?

Good Question.

Here is a rant from a retired fighter pilot that is worth reading:

It is rumored that our current secretary of defense recently asked the question, “Where are all the dynamic leaders of the past?”

I can only assume, if that is true, that he was referring to Robin Olds, Jimmy Doolittle, Patton, Ike, Boyington, Nimitz, etc. I've got the answer. They were fired before they made Major.

Our nation doesn't want those kinds of leaders anymore. Squadron commanders don't run squadrons and wing commanders don't run wings. They are managed by higher ranking dildos with other esoteric goals in mind.

Continue reading “Journal: Where Have the Real Leaders Gone?”

2010/12/102010/12/17

Journal: Crowd Fund-Raising Here to Stay….

03 Economy, Civil Society, Collective Intelligence, Commercial Intelligence

Crowd-Fundraising For Causes Adds Up Fast

Phi Beta Iota: Excellent story, with $200,641 being the top funded project so far. Imagine the day when the public refuses to pay taxes but contributes to what it really wants, cutting out the carpet-bagging intermediaries. Missile defense and most Pentagon pork would NOT get funded by an informed engaged public. The game has changed.

Online:

http://www.indiegogo.com

http://www.kickstarter.com

http://spot.us (reporting)

http://pledgie.com

2010/12/102010/12/10

Reference: Innovation From, By, and For Africa

08 Wild Cards, Collective Intelligence, Collective Intelligence, Commercial Intelligence, Communities of Practice, Cultural Intelligence, IO Mapping, IO Sense-Making, Methods & Process, Mobile, Policies, Reform

Jerri Chou

Co-Founder All Day Buffet, The Feast, TBD and Lovely Day

Posted: December 10, 2010 12:39 PM

Innovation From, By and For Africa

Collaboration is never easy, particularly when dealing with complex issues like development. So imagine an attempt at galvanizing an entire continent to collaborate for societal change and innovation and the task seems daunting, difficult, if not impossible. Well turns out it's always worth trying and that the results can be greatly inspiring.

I'm talking about The Open Innovation Africa Summit (OIAS) I recently attended, hosted by Nokia, The World Bank and Cap Gemini. Over the course of three days, 200-plus leaders and innovators convened in the Rift Valley of Kenya, Africa to share, connect, and take action toward fostering innovation in and from Africa.

. . . . . . .

Facilitated by Cap Gemini's exploratory process, this remarkable body of people broke out into working groups to focus and dive deep into four specific areas:

African Innovation Ecosystem
Emerging Business Models for the BoP
Human Capital — Education for All
Mobile Information Society.

Read rest of article….

2010/12/102010/12/10

Reference (2): Income Inequality in the USA

03 Economy, 07 Other Atrocities, 11 Society, Commerce, Commercial Intelligence, Corruption, Cultural Intelligence, Government

editor spinney time — Chuck Spinney Sounds Off

It is becoming increasingly clear that the United States passed through some kind of fork in the economic road in the aftermath of the Vietnam War and has now landed on onto an evolutionary pathway toward some kind of decline. The questions of what interplay of chance and necessity created the turning movement in the pathway of socio-economic evolution, how enduring that new pathway is, or where it is leading no one can answer; but with the advantage of hindsight, it is becoming empirically clear that most of the adverse economic trends of de-industrialization, deregulation, increasing debt, a collapsing trade balance, the stagnation of real wages, rising income inequality, etc., took a systemic turn for the worse during the five years between 1977 and 1982.

Attached are two reports (in pdf format) on one aspect of anatomy of decline: rising income inequality. They build on the seminal research (which can be downloaded here and here) of Professors Emanuel Saez's (Univ. of Calif. Berkeley) and Thomas Piketty (Paris School of Economics), which quantified and analyzed the size, nature, and effects of rising income inequality in the United States.

The first report has been prepared by the democratic majority staff of the Joint Economic Committee in Congress and therefore may be discounted by some as partisan — to those readers inclined to dismiss this report, I suggest that they compare its results of the Saez-Piketty analyses before jumping to any conclusions.

The second report is a non partisan analysis produced by Frank Levy and Peter Temlin of Industrial Performance Center of MIT.

Reference A: The Senate Report (2010)

Reference B: The MIT Report (2007)

Journal: Simpson-Bowles Deficit Reduction All Lies?

Journal: Rug Mechants & Tax Traps

Reference: Wall Street Does NOT Produce Value

Journal: Deficit Reduction Plan Hoses Everyone BUT the 10% at the Top

2010/12/102010/12/10

Journal: Deradicalizing Islamist Extremists, Internal Al Qaeda Critiques

07 Other Atrocities, 09 Terrorism, 10 Security, Civil Society, Cultural Intelligence, IO Mapping

berto small — Berto Jongman Recommends...

Deradicalizing Islamist Extremists

by Angel Rabasa, Stacie Pettyjohn, Jeremy Ghez, Christopher Boucek

RAND Monograph 2010 242 Pages Free Online or $26

Proactive measures to prevent vulnerable individuals from radicalizing and to rehabilitate those who have already embraced extremism have been implemented, to varying degrees, in several Middle Eastern, Southeast Asian, and European countries. A key question is whether the objective of these programs should be disengagement (a change in behavior) or deradicalization (a change in beliefs) of militants. Furthermore, a unique challenge posed by militant Islamist groups is that their ideology is rooted in a major world religion. An examination of deradicalization and counter-radicalization programs in the Middle East, Southeast Asia, and Europe assessed the strengths and weaknesses of each program, finding that the best-designed programs leverage local cultural patterns to achieve their objectives. Such programs cannot simply be transplanted from one country to another. They need to develop organically in a specific country and culture.

Broadside fired at al-Qaeda leaders

By Syed Saleem Shahzad

Asia Times, 10 December 2010

ISLAMABAD – A number of senior al-Qaeda members who had earlier opposed the September 11, 2001, attacks on the United States and some of whom were recently released from detention in Iran, have produced an electronic book critical of al-Qaeda's leadership vision and strategy.

The book, the first of its kind to publicly show collective dissent within al-Qaeda, was released last month. It urges the self-acclaimed global Muslim resistance against Western hegemony to open itself to the Muslim intelligentsia for advice and to harmonize its strategy with mainstream Islamic movements.

Full Article….

2010/12/102011/10/22

Journal: Michael Lind–Nobody Represents the American People

Civil Society, Collective Intelligence, Counter-Oppression/Counter-Dictatorship Practices, Cultural Intelligence, Government, Methods & Process, Policies

Topic:

Populism

Nobody represents the American people

By Michael Lind

Many Americans have come to the conclusion that nobody represents them in Washington anymore. They are right.

This situation is not the result of a sinister conspiracy by a single, unitary, all-powerful and diabolical elite. The origins of the disconnect are structural. The mass membership organizations that once represented ordinary Americans at the state and national level have been replaced by elite organizations that raise their money from a small number of billionaires rather than hundreds of thousands or millions of dues-paying members.

Phi Beta Iota: This is the first time we have seen this important idea presented so plainly. GroupOn might yet help solve the problem. What is clear is that the Internet has spawned the fragmentation of groups even further, without offering something like GroupOn that could bring them all back together issue by issue–this was the reason Earth Intelligence Network was created, to be a proponent for a World Brain and EarthGame that could connect all people with all relevant information, and in this way enable informed participatory democracy across multiple boundaries–Panarchy, the opposite of Anarchy. Electoral Reform is an important first step, but as the full article suggests, the public desperately needs some vehicle for representing all of the people all of the time.

2010/12/102010/12/10