Category: Collaboration Zones

Posted on

Reference: Open Society on Afghan Views

08 Wild Cards, 11 Society, Cultural Intelligence, IO Sense-Making, Non-Governmental, Peace Intelligence, White Papers
Chuck Spinney Recommends

The below report by the Open Society Foundations (a Soros project) is extremely important and should get the widest distribution.  It documents the cumulative blowback caused by our narcissistic ideas about how to win the hearts and minds of the Afghans.  It does this by systematically examining the views of a wide variety of Afghans in an effort to construct an Afghan narrative of how the intervention is affecting their lives. That this narrative is often at variance with our views (which makes it easy to dismiss by western military leaders), the report shows why this is really quite beside the point.  Of particular interest (at least to me) is the Afghan narrative of the psychological effects of collateral damage cause by our all-seeing, all-knowing precision strike systems. It is a classic on how the ongoing self-referencing BS about the performance of these weapons is blowing back on itself to magnify the atmosphere of mistrust and alienation that is playing directly into the success of the insurgent's guerrilla strategy.

Of course, this report might be easily dismissed by those patriotic Amurikans, drunk on High Tea, as the subversive product of the lefty Hungarian-emigre George Soros, who is, after all, just another ‘other.'

Downloadable PDF

Phi Beta Iota: A properly managed intelligence campaign would have anticipated and then closely monitored this kind of situational awareness.  It is called “Intelligence Preparation of the Battlefield.”  Neither CIA nor DIA know how to do this.

See Also:

Reference: Fixing Intel–A Blueprint for Making Intelligence Relevant in Afghanistan

Review: Operation Dark Heart–Spycraft and Special Ops on the Frontlines of Afghanistan — and the Path to Victory

Review: Surrender to Kindness (One Man’s Epic Journey for Love and Peace)

2010 INTELLIGENCE FOR EARTH: Clarity, Diversity, Integrity, & Sustainability

Posted on

Worth a Look: Seena Sharp on Competitive Intelligence

Commercial Intelligence, Worth A Look

“What is CI and What's In It For Me” also explains the larger picture of CI and why it's not just competitors.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W95wzPGm-T4 (less than 3 minutes)

Customers Will Buy When You Give Them What They Want  (80 seconds)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W95wzPGm-T4

Competitive Intelligence Always Rewards You   (less than one minute)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OV4h7UOz5_8

Posted on

Sharp Insights: Truth Central to Competitive Intelligence

Commerce, Commercial Intelligence

Home Page

SharpInsights #53: Modern Advice From a Long-Dead Roman

Lucius Annaeus Seneca was a Roman dramatist, Stoic philosopher, politician, and history's earliest proponent of competitive intelligence. Wait…what?

One of Seneca's most famous quotes is a management mantra: “Luck is what happens when preparation meets opportunity.” For executives making decisions in a recession-battered marketplace, “preparation” means more than skimming last year's sales figures or catching up on trade magazines.

Competitive intelligence reveals the current, comprehensive, objective truth about your product or service, brand, company, customers, and industry. The cold hard truth can lead to a warm fuzzy feeling for managers who apply their CI preparation to opportunity.

Posted on

Journal: 10% Foreclosures, 1-2% Mortgage Default

06 Family, 07 Other Atrocities, 09 Justice, 11 Society, Civil Society, Commerce, Commercial Intelligence, Cultural Intelligence, Government
Foreclosures in Las Vegas

The Huffington Post is doing a very fine job of raising key issues, but in isolation and out of context.  Here is one story they have brought forward.  As Cleveland found out when they had to raze to the ground 11,000 abandoned units, foreclosures come with very heavy social and financial costs.  It is not to late to stop all foreclosures and evictions as we recommended in October 2008, to no effect.  America is going through a multi-dimensional crisis without any leadership whatsoever.  One way to understand the crisis is to study the Revolution Matrix and the Negative Book List.  The Positive Book List requires some semblance of leadership and legitimacy, at this time not to be found in America, outside of the Virtual Cabinet at The Huffington Post, which does not really exist–it could, but it does not.

Posted on

Journal: $100 Billion Up in Smoke

Commercial Intelligence, Definitions, Military
David Isenberg

David Isenberg

Author, Shadow Force: Private Security Contractors in Iraq

Posted: October 7, 2010 12:24 PM

A Hundred Billion Dollars Up in Smoke

It is a pity that last week's Senate Armed Services committee hearing on “Department of Defense Efficiencies Initiatives” did not get more coverage, as there were some startling assertions made.

Consider what Sen. Claire McCaskill (D-MO) said. McCaskill, by the way, is more qualified than most members of Congress to talk on the subject of contracting. During her years as a prosecutor she conducted performance audits on state programs. She was named as one of the select senators to sit on the Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations, formerly known as the Truman Committee. In fact, she was a co-sponsor of a major bill that established a modern day Truman Committee called the Wartime Contracting Commission, charged with investigating wasteful, fraudulent and abusive contracts in the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

In addition to working to establish a committee to examine wartime contracting, in 2009 she was named chairman of a new subcommittee that investigates contracting abuses throughout the federal government. The Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee (HSGAC) Subcommittee on Contracting Oversight strives to root out government waste by focusing on contracts and the means by which the federal government provides accountability to those contracts.

So when she says the following we should pay attention:

I–I'm a conservative person when it comes to estimating numbers, because of my auditing background. I think it's very conservative to say that we've had $100 billion go up in smoke in Iraq, from bad contracting, that it's not as if there weren't competing people who could have been brought in; it just was easier not to. And so, I urge you to keep us posted on how you're integrating that kind of contracting into the contracting reforms.

Read rest of blog….

Phi Beta Iota: It occurs to us, reading this, that “Deep Corruption” is the equivalent of “Deep Secrecy.”  Deep Corruption is corruption built into the system as legal or “within the bounds of reasonable dishonesty.”  Individuals can claim to be honorable, and believe themselves to be honorable, but in “going along” they are in fact part of Deep Corruption.

Posted on

Journal: Big Companies Missing the Boat….

Commercial Intelligence, Cultural Intelligence, Peace Intelligence

Still in very early Beta, but you can now sign up for a free account in the Peace Cloud. Private studios, publishing tools and more….

Xeden is launching this year and building out over the next year the Peace Cloud which will host to many of the NGOs, non-profits from around the world that address needs on the ground. This year the Peace Day event is a 5 day celebration of the United Nations Millennium…

The official website for the International Day of Peace Broadcast, September 17-21.

Phi Beta Iota: In our view all the big companies: IBM, Oracle, Microsoft, Google (in a nose dive now) are missing the boat.  Here are the three C's of the future:  Cellular (free), Cloud (free access, for fee decision-support), Communities (free).