Peace Intelligence – Page 410 – Public Intelligence Blog

Phi Beta Iota: The most important decision Barack Obama faces is the fundamental one of whether he wants to lead a government that works for all, or continue to be a meaningless placeholder in the theater of the absurd. Electoral Reform is the only thing that matters at this point. Absent Electoral Reform, his mid-term Cabinet appointments will be meaningless–business as usual. Colin Powell is as good as it gets if he can reframe his sense of loyalty back to the Constitutional Oath and actually down-size the Pentagon program by a third or more, while shifting $200 billion a year to State, where Senator Chuck Hagel would be well qualified to get the place back to evidence-based policies and coherent strategic planning. Commerce is a big one–Clyde Prestowitz would be our recommendation, along with Joseph Stiglitz to Office of Management and Budget–see our Virtual Cabinet at Huffington Post. However stellar the appointments, nothing they do will matter absent fundamental Electoral Reform and a restoration of the integrity not only of the US executive policy process, but of the legislative deliberation process as well. Only Electoral Reform can create an honest representative Congress. There are many other critical changes to be made at the highest levels, but ONLY in the context of a restoration of the government being Of, By, and For We the People. Obama is one single piece of paper away from greatness. We observe with interest.

2010/12/05

Journal: WikiLeak’s Doomsday Files

Civil Society, IO Secrets, Peace Intelligence, Secrecy & Politics of Secrecy

editor spinney time — Chuck Spinney Recommends....

If this report is accurate, Assange may have created a cyberwar war equivalent of the unbreakable “one time pad” — all Assange needs to do is post the key and doomsday bomb goes boom. Perhaps the Pentagon ought to hire him to teach DoD how to wage the net centric warfare it loves to talk about.

WikiLeaks Ready to Release Giant ‘Insurance' File if Shut Down

Published December 05, 2010

Sunday Times

Julian Assange, the WikiLeaks founder, has circulated across the internet an encrypted “poison pill” cache of uncensored documents suspected to include files on BP and Guantanamo Bay.

One of the files identified this weekend by The Sunday Times — called the “insurance” file — has been downloaded from the WikiLeaks website by tens of thousands of supporters, from America to Australia.

Read the rest of the article….

2010/12/032010/12/03

Reference: The Walk from “No” to “Yes” (William Ury)

Cultural Intelligence, IO Sense-Making, Methods & Process, Peace Intelligence

William Ury

Finding the 18th camel….

15,000 tribes in touch with one another

The secret to peace is not easy, not new, but it is simple: We are the secret to peace, Us acting as a surrounding community.

The circle revisited…

The third side of any conflict is those not party to the conflict.

TEDX Presentation on Abraham's Walk (Unity & Respect)

William Ury is a mediator, writer and speaker, working with conflicts ranging from family feuds to boardroom battles to ethnic wars. He's the author of “Getting to Yes.” Full bio and more links

Tip of the Hat to John Steiner.

Phi Beta Iota: This is kum-ba-ya hand-holding at a world-class level. Utterly brilliant on the process, totally lacking on the facts and how to use them, pooling of resources and how to use them, etcetera.

2010/12/022010/12/02

Journal: Wikileaks Exposes How NYT and Washington Post Shill for US Government on Iran Missile “Threat”

04 Inter-State Conflict, 05 Iran, 06 Russia, 07 Other Atrocities, 10 Security, Corruption, Government, Journalism/Free-Press/Censorship, Media, Peace Intelligence

Iranians (Persians) have viewed Russia (Soviet Union) with distrust and as a menace or outright threat for hundreds of years, at least since the Russian Tsars cemented their expansion into Turkestan (or the Turkic countries in what is now called Central Asia). The fact that Iran sits on top of one of the world's largest reservoirs of oil and gas adds to their fears. Russia is also much closer to Iran than the United States. So from a Russian perspective, the emergence of an Iranian nuclear delivery capability would be a far more dangerous ramifications for Russia than for the US, at least in raw geopolitical terms.

With this in mind, the attached report by Gareth Porter begs the question: Why are the Russians less concerned about the so-called Iranian ballistic missile/nuclear threat than the United States? Why would the Washington Post and New York Times bias their reporting in a way that downplays the Russia's more moderate view?

To ask this question is to answer it. (hint: Simply ask what other country is most obsessed by Iran?) Chuck

December 1, 2010

Documents Show NYT and Washington Post Shilling for US Government on Iran Missile “Threat”

Wikileaks Exposes Complicity of the Press

By GARETH PORTER

Counterpunch

A diplomatic cable from last February released by Wikileaks provides a detailed account of how Russian specialists on the Iranian ballistic missile program refuted the U.S. suggestion that Iran has missiles that could target European capitals or intends to develop such a capability.

In fact, the Russians challenged the very existence of the mystery missile the U.S. claims Iran acquired from North Korea.

But readers of the two leading U.S. newspapers never learned those key facts about the document.

The New York Times and Washington Post reported only that the United States believed Iran had acquired such missiles – supposedly called the BM-25 – from North Korea. Neither newspaper reported the detailed Russian refutation of the U.S. view on the issue or the lack of hard evidence for the BM-25 from the U.S. side.

Read the rest of this article….

2010/12/012011/01/03

Citizen Command Center Humanitarian Relief Database for Action

02 Infectious Disease, 03 Environmental Degradation, Civil Society, Earth Intelligence, Geospatial, Gift Intelligence, International Aid, Non-Governmental, Peace Intelligence

quickstart link

http://www.citizencommandcenter.org/quick/start
The purpose of this site is to provide a central location to find resource status information for disaster zones and to help regions prepare for disaster.

Disaster Response
Disaster Preparedness
On-going Human Services

We aim to enter command & control information for regions IN ADVANCE of a disaster, AND immediately following, so as to help relief groups hit the ground running, and to help survivors immediately locate services and supplies in the event of a disaster in their region. This command & control information might be as simple as entering the name and cell phone for groups that are prepared to be first responders in a region. Or if a region's disaster community chooses, it can mean entering a list of disaster response units and/or facilities that are on “standby” for disaster response activity. There are many disaster response “command and control” systems in use by VOADs and EMA organizations. We hope to compliment what these established systems offer and we hope to offer unaffiliated groups a method for tracking their own needs and resources.

2010/12/012010/12/01

Journal: Taking a WikiLeak

Civil Society, Cultural Intelligence, Government, IO Sense-Making, Law Enforcement, Military, Peace Intelligence

Taking a Wikileak

In my obligatory post about Wikileaks as the story du jour, I point to the great set of questions Dan Gillmor has posted in his column at Salon. These are especially lucid. I like especially Dan’s point about the character of the communications that were leaked, that many of the messages are gossip. Journalists are dutifully reporting “facts” gleaned from the leaked material without necessarily digging deeper, verifying and analyzing. Of course, they don’t have time – the information environment moves too quickly, he who hesitates is lost, accuracy be damned.

Then again, journalism is so often about facts, not truth. Facts are always suspect, personal interpretations are often incorrect, memories are often wildly inaccurate. History is, no doubt, filled with wrong facts and bad interpretations that, regardless, are accepted as somehow “true.”

The high-minded interpretation of this and other leaks, that people need to know what is being said and done by their representatives in government, especially in a “democratic society,” is worth examining. We’re not really a democracy; government by rule or consensus of a majority of the people doesn’t scale, and it would be difficult for the average citizen to commit the time required to be conversant in depth with all the issues that a complex government must consider.

Do we benefit by sharing more facts with more people? (Dan notes that 3 million or so in government have the clearance to read most of the documents leaked – this seems like a lot of people to be keeping secrets… is the “secret” designation really all that meaningful, in this case?) But to my question – I think there’s a benefit in knowing more about government operations, but I’m less clear that this sort of leak increases knowledge vs. noise.

I’m certain about one thing: we shouldn’t assume that the leaked documents alone reveal secrets that are accurate and true. They’re just more pieces of a very complex puzzle.

See Also:

Graphic: Information Pathologies

2010/11/30

Journal: AlterNet on “Beyond Madness”–Patraeus in Pakistan

Methods & Process, Military, Peace Intelligence

‘Beyond Madness': Obama's War on Terror Setting Nuclear-Armed Pakistan on Fire

Rather than seeking to stabilize Pakistan, General David Petraeus has been irresponsibly lighting matches with his shortsighted use of Special Forces and drone strikes

by Fred Branfman

EXCERPT 1: But rather than seeking to stabilize Pakistan, General David Petraeus has, incredibly, been irresponsibly lighting matches through his shortsighted and relentless effort to secure Afghanistan by using U.S. forces and drone strikes, and pressuring the Pakistani Army to attack Taliban “sanctuaries” in Pakistan’s northwest provinces. Wajid Shamsul Hasan, Pakistan's High Commissioner to London for the past 16 years and a pillar of the Establishment, has recently stated that U.S. drone and gunship attacks in Pakistan have “set the country on fire” and threatened that such acts could eventually lead to attacks on U.S. personnel in Pakistan. Petraeus has disastrously miscalculated. The more “progress” he tries to show in Afghanistan, the more he weakens the U.S. position in far more important Pakistan.

EXCERPT 2: The single most important — yet surprisingly ignored — revelation of Bob Woodward's new book, Obama's Wars, is that Petraeus and the Obama team never discussed how their strategy for attacking Taliban sanctuaries in Pakistan was weakening the Pakistani state. Woodward also makes clear that it is Petraeus, not Obama, who is driving U.S. policy in “Af-Pak.” CIA Director Leon Panetta declared that “no Democratic president can go against military advice, especially if he asked for it. So just do it. Do what they say,” according to the book. Petraeus’ power derives from America’s unconscious need for a military hero and his perceived and overblown success in Iraq. But this perception has blinded normally sensible observers to his disastrous performance in Pakistan since becoming Centcom commander in October 2008.

Tip of the Hat to John Steiner via E-Mail.

Phi Beta Iota: the author has pulled together a number of linked references and this is a useful article narrowly focused. He missed the larger picture, the fact that Obama has no strategy and no brain trust (the emphasis being on brains in touch with reality). Obama will get his Wall Street reward on his present course, but he is neither leading nor serving the nation with his ideologically passive-aggressive incoherence across the board–nothing serious on all ten threats to humanity, nothing serious on all twelve core policies, an intelligence community that is pathologically expensive and ineffective, and a Pentagon that is so out of control as to be a cancer on the public blood, treasure, and spirit. these are all good people trapped in a bad system–they desperately need a “wake-up call” and we are not sure that is achievable at this point.