Category: Civil Society

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Cynthia Boaz: 14 Propaganda Techniques

Civil Society, Corruption, Cultural Intelligence, IO Impotency, Media

14 Propaganda Techniques Fox News TV Uses to Brainwash Americans

By Cynthia Boaz

Truth Out, July 4, 2011

There is nothing more sacred to the maintenance of democracy than a free press. Access to comprehensive, accurate and quality information is essential to the manifestation of Socratic citizenship – the society characterized by a civically engaged, well-informed and socially invested populace. Thus, to the degree that access to quality information is willfully or unintentionally obstructed, democracy itself is degraded.

It is ironic that in the era of 24-hour cable news networks and “reality” programming, the news-to-fluff ratio and overall veracity of information has declined precipitously. Take the fact Americans now spend on average about 50 hours a week using various forms of media, while at the same time cultural literacy levels hover just above the gutter.

Reprinted in Al-Jazeera….

Phi Beta Iota:  Although the author focuses on Fox News, all of the propaganda techniques are common to the mainstream media that refused fully paid advertisements against the elective war on Iraq (NYT, LAT, WP) as well as Huffington Post and other minor-league leftist outlets.  “Idiot America” is the title of a serious book.   This condition will persist as long as the government–and the country as a whole–lack the integrity to restore truth to all dialog and deliberation.

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Michael Ostrolenk: Across the USA Call to End Militarism

04 Inter-State Conflict, 07 Other Atrocities, 10 Security, 11 Society, Advanced Cyber/IO, Civil Society, Counter-Oppression/Counter-Dictatorship Practices, Cultural Intelligence, Ethics, Military, Officers Call, Peace Intelligence
Michael Ostrolenk Recommends...

Americans from Across the Political Spectrum Call for End to U.S. Militarism

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Tuesday, July 5th 2011

FOR FURTHER INFORMATION
Kevin B. Zeese
KBZeese at Gmail.com, 518-543-6920

Americans from Across the Political Spectrum Call for End to U.S. Militarism

Washington, DC: Putting aside political differences on other issues, Americans from across the political spectrum have sent a letter to the president and congress urging an end to U.S. militarism. The letter, spearheaded by Come Home America, cites a combination of events that present a “historic opportunity to redirect U.S. foreign policy down the pathways of peace, liberty, justice, respect for community, obedience to the rule of law and fiscal responsibility.” The full letter with all signers can be seen at www.ComeHomeAmerica.US.

Read full release…

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Open Source Insurgency = System Disruption

09 Justice, 11 Society, Civil Society, Commerce, Corruption, Counter-Oppression/Counter-Dictatorship Practices, Cultural Intelligence, Government, IO Deeds of Peace, IO Deeds of War, Law Enforcement, Military, Peace Intelligence
John Robb

Thursday, 30 June 2011

WAR NERD: How the IRA used Systems Disruption

I've enjoyed The War Nerd for years.  Great, colorful writing.  The author of the column, “Gary Brecher,” was never on the same page as me when it came to warfare.  However, that's changed.

He now thinks, and makes an excellent case for global guerrilla thinking.  In short: that blood and guts warfare is counter productive and that systems disruption (hiting network systempunkts/nodes to generate high ROI‘s and publicity) is a potential path to long term victory for guerrillas.  In short: in the modern context, if you keep the blood/guts to a min, and keep the cost ratio massively in your favor while staying alive, you will eventually win.

To demonstrate this, he has a great article on how the IRA eventually adopted systems disruption:

“In 1994, they took the idea of non-lethal warfare a notch up by doing one of the most revolutionary things any guerrilla army has ever done: IRA mortar teams dropped shells on the runways at Heathrow Airport, totally stopping air traffic… but the shells weren’t even designed to explode. Intentional duds. That’s amazing; I’ve never heard of anything like that. It shows how far they’d come by that stage, away from the simple Al Qaeda maximum-blood crap I bought into in that earlier article.  In contemporary urban guerrilla warfare, at least in Western Europe, killing civvies is counterproductive. What you want to do, what the IRA had mastered by the 1990s, was messing with the incredibly fragile and expensive networks that keep a huge city going. Interrupt them and you cost the enemy billions of dollars, and they don’t even have any gory corpses to shake in your faces. Fucking brilliant, and I was too dumb to see it!

Continue reading “Open Source Insurgency = System Disruption”

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Greece About Future of Democracy, Not Budget

08 Wild Cards, 11 Society, Civil Society, Cultural Intelligence, Government
John Steiner

Postcard From Greece: This Should Not Be About Austerity, It's About The Future Of Democracy

Arianna Huffington

Huffington Post, 28 June 2011

Given that the Greeks invented democracy, it's only fitting that they're now being given the chance to reinvent it. And yes, I know we Greeks have a reputation for mythmaking and drama — but, as I found out during my trip to Greece last week, those really are the stakes.

Until I went over and witnessed what's happening, I too had become convinced that the real issues were the ones the media were obsessively covering: the effects of a potential sovereign default on the Euro and worries about the crisis spreading to other European countries.

But here's the bigger issue: Can a truly democratic movement break the stranglehold of corrupt elites and powerful anti-democratic institutional forces that have come to characterize not just the politics of Greece, but most Western democracies, including our own? Greece is only an extreme example of an unfolding seismic social shift that is challenging democracies the world over.

What happens in Greece might very well tell us whether democracy will recover from the crisis of legitimacy exacerbated by the financial crisis or whether it will shrink — undermined by the very forces that brought on the crisis in the first place.

It's way too early to tell whether the forces of democracy will prevail, but I came away extraordinarily moved and heartened by the courage, passion, engagement and dedication I witnessed during a trip in which three different perspectives converged.

Read full article….

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Landmark Afghan hotel attacked

08 Wild Cards, 10 Security, 11 Society, Civil Society, Corruption, Counter-Oppression/Counter-Dictatorship Practices, Cultural Intelligence, Government, IO Deeds of War, Military
Click on Image to Enlarge

UPDATED to add photo.  Guards at the front door, no guards across the totally exposed back end.  Sheraton San Salvador was attacked from the ravine.   Deja vu.

Landmark Afghan hotel attacked

Los Angeles Times, 28 June 2011

Gunmen and suicide bombers strike the tightly secured Intercontinental Hotel in Kabul, which has large foreign clientele. It was not immediately known how many people were killed or wounded.

Read full article…

Phi Beta Iota: Well-intentioned professionals like to say that if the US only has enough will to persist, it can prevail against any enemy.  That is not correct.  When the US engaged in elective wars and lacks legitimacy in the eyes of the occupied public, it will inevitably lose.  When the US Government is delusional and ignoring the harsh realities at home, it loses its domestic legitimacy.  Events like the Tet Offensive, or the increasing attacks in the heart of Kabul, accentuate the cognitive dissonance among all parties.  This will not end well for the US.

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Structural Power and Federal Feudalism

09 Justice, 11 Society, Civil Society, Corruption, Counter-Oppression/Counter-Dictatorship Practices, Cultural Intelligence, Government
Nathan Allen

While the U.S. government may be described as a massive wealth transferring scheme, looting the middle class for the elite, I’d suggest that ‘wealth’ and ‘elite’ are not precisely correct. The transformation in Western power structures over past three centuries is such that the ‘elite’ was formerly indistinguishable from the government, which is the hallmark of feudal government; whereas now, the locus of power is the government itself, not any particular group of people.

We still find the old system at work in dictatorships – Libya, N. Korea – in which the government is indistinguishable from a small group of people and for whom wealth accumulation is the primary goal.

But wealth isn’t the primary goal of western governments; they have a nearly unlimited ability to create their own wealth (debt and printing money) – or destroy it (debt and printing money). The primary concern of these supposedly post-feudal governments is stability and power, and their primary means to securing these ends is patronage.

Patronage existed in feudal governments, but it was a means to an end (wealth accumulation), and not the end in itself. As such, it’s then not surprising that the primary purpose of most government endeavors – the education and court systems, intelligence communities, healthcare – is to employ the greatest number of people, thus securing widespread government support. Critical mass is reached when a simple majority of the voters earn >50% of their income from government sources – there are people who work for a living and people who vote for a living, and once the latter reaches >50%, the former becomes politically irrelevant.

Continue reading “Structural Power and Federal Feudalism”

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Resiliency Wiki & Open Source Insurgency

09 Justice, 11 Society, Blog Wisdom, Civil Society, Counter-Oppression/Counter-Dictatorship Practices, Cultural Intelligence, IO Deeds of Peace
John Robb

JOURNAL: The Resilient Community Wiki

The great part about starting out small, simple, and a little cheesy is that it can only get better from there.  Using that logic, my friends and I have launched a wiki called Miiu (pronounced me-you).  Miiu is a visual wiki.  Essentially, a catalogue of things (products, tools, etc.) and places (homes, businesses, gov't buildings, etc.).

The Resilient Community Wiki

To start off, our goal is to do what lots of people have asked me to create: a wiki that catalogues everything related to resilient communities.  We'd like to create a visual catelogue of the things (from DIY solar stills to an inventory of homes, farms, businesses in your community) that will be useful in the development of resilient communities.

JOURNAL: Lulzsec as an Open Source Insurgency

Lulzsec has some claims to being an open source insurgency.  It operated as a foco by generating a plausible promise: its hacks were high profile and successful, proving that it's possible to successfully attack/damage all big organizations despite the billions they spend on computer security.   This promise has also generated copycats/clones around the world.  Finally, it is now disbanding (forgoing any formal leadership role).  If they can disband in a way that lets them escape unscathed, that only adds to the promise. Quote from their website:

“For the past 50 days we've been disrupting and exposing corporations, governments, often the general population itself, and quite possibly everything in between, just because we could.  We hope, wish, even beg, that the movement manifests itself into a revolution that can continue on without us. The support we've gathered for it in such a short space of time is truly overwhelming, and not to mention humbling.  Please don't stop. Together, united, we can stomp down our common oppressors and imbue ourselves with the power and freedom we deserve.”