Communities of Practice – Page 1050 – Public Intelligence Blog

2011/12/122012/12/11

2011 Robert Steele: Global Trends 2030 – Gaps + RECAP

Corruption, Cultural Intelligence, Director of National Intelligence et al (IC), Earth Intelligence, Government, IO Impotency, Methods & Process, Officers Call

steele smiling final — Robert David STEELE Vivas

UPDATE 11 December 2012: The report is now out. The below commentary was posted 12 December 2011, one year prior to the final report. Global Trends 2030: Full Copy (166 Pages) Here, Review by Robert Steele — Report Lauds Fracking as Energy Solution, Disappoints on Multiple Fronts

Although Global Trends 2030 will not be released by the US secret intelligence community until after the November 2012 election, minutes of the 22-24 May 2011 meeting are available and provide a useful panorama of what the group is and is not considering.

Original Source (PDF 14 Pages)

Back-Up Source (PDF 14 Pages)

A few observations:

1. They still do not have a Strategic Analytic Model, nor do they understand in any systematic manner the preconditions and precipitants of revolution, or the cultural fundamentals.

Trends One (Negative) — Click on Image to Enlarge

2. They are so beholden to status quo science they actually consider the exploitation of shale gas and oil to be a serious positive–lacking a strategic analytic model, it does not occur to them to examine the true cost of such initiatives, e.g. water, environmental degradation, etcetera. They do not “get” the fragmentation of knowledge as being among the chief obstacles to creating strategic intelligence.

3. They are oblivious to the “eight tribes“* while creeping up on government-business collaboration (and clearly also oblivious to the fact that this is actually plutocracy and corporate capture, not collaboration).

* Academia, Civil Society [inclusive of labor and religion], Commerce, Government [all levels], Law Enforcement, Media, Military, Non-Governmental / Non-Profit.

Continue reading “2011 Robert Steele: Global Trends 2030 – Gaps + RECAP”

2011/12/122011/12/12

OWL: US-NATO Soldiers Arrive at the Jordan-Syria Border

Government, Military

Sunday, 11. December 2011

Report: Foreign Troops Begin to Spread Near the Villages of Al-Mafraq

Update 1: Today at 12:00 P.M. we contacted DOD Press Office via two voicemail messages and one e-mail asking for comment(s) on this story. As of 6:00 P.M. EST we have not heard back.

Update 2: Another journalist with a major mainstream media publication was told by his editors that there would be no coverage or follow up on these developments.

SyriaJordan According to first-hand accounts and reports provided to Boiling Frogs Post by several sources in Jordan, during the last few hours foreign military groups, estimated at hundreds of individuals, began to spread near the villages of the north-Jordan city of “Al-Mafraq”, which is adjacent to the Jordanian and Syrian border.

According to one Jordanian military officer who asked to remain anonymous, hundreds of soldiers who speak languages other than Arabic were seen during the past two days in those areas moving back and forth in military vehicles between the King Hussein Air Base of al-Mafraq (10 km from the Syrian border), and the vicinity of Jordanian villages adjacent to the Syrian border, such as village Albaej (5 km from the border), the area around the dam of Sarhan, the villages of Zubaydiah and al-Nahdah adjacent to the Syrian border.

Another report received from our source in Amman identified an additional US-NATO Command Center in “al-Houshah,’ a village near Mafraq.

Our Iraqi journalist source in London provided us with the following related information:

“Some of the US forces that left the Ain al-Assad Air base in Iraq last Thursday, did not come back to the USA or its base in Germany, but were transferred to Jordan during the evening hours.”

Continue reading “OWL: US-NATO Soldiers Arrive at the Jordan-Syria Border”

2011/12/122011/12/12

Mini-Me: Comunidad de Estados Latinoamericanos y Caribeños (CELAC)

01 Brazil, 03 Economy, 08 Wild Cards, 09 Justice, 10 Security, 11 Society, Advanced Cyber/IO, Commerce, Commercial Intelligence, Counter-Oppression/Counter-Dictatorship Practices, Cultural Intelligence, Government

The Community of Latin American and Caribbean States (Spanish: Comunidad de Estados Latinoamericanos y Caribeños, CELAC, Portuguese: Comunidade de Estados Latino-Americanos e Caribenhos, French: Communauté des États Latino-Américains et Caribéens, Dutch: Gemeenschap van de Latijns-Amerikaanse en Caribische landen) is the tentative name^[1] of a regional bloc of Latin American and Caribbean nations created on February 23, 2010, at the Rio Group–Caribbean Community Unity Summit held in Playa del Carmen, Quintana Roo, Mexico.^[2]^[3] It consists of all sovereign countries in the Americas, except for Canada, France, the Netherlands and the United States. British and Danish dependencies in the Americas are also not represented in CELAC.

CELAC is an example of a decade-long push for deeper integration within the Americas.^[4] CELAC is being created to deepen Latin American integration and to reduce the once overwhelming influence of the United States on the politics and economics of Latin America, and is seen as an alternative to the Organization of American States (OAS), the regional body organized largely by Washington in 1948, ostensibly as a countermeasure to potential Soviet influence in the region.^[4]^[5] ^[6]

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2011/12/12

Tom Atlee: Sources of the Occupy Movement Part III

11 Society, Advanced Cyber/IO, Civil Society, Counter-Oppression/Counter-Dictatorship Practices, Cultural Intelligence, Ethics, Hacking

Part I: Sources of the Occupy Movement

Part II: Influence of Activist Arts & Video Game Culture

Part III: Ongoing Movements and Organizing

Feminist and anti-oppression activists, the human potential movement, and other ongoing organizers and movements for human betterment have played important roles in the emergence and nature of the Occupy movement. (The articles below are just a few examples.) Such movements have been organizing demonstrations, communities and networks and transforming people's consciousness and behavior in one form or another for hundreds of years. They've been training and empowering people and exposing them to the dark side of the social systems they live in and the possibilities for a better world, even as they themselves have become more experienced, aware, and skilled at new ways of living and being together.

Many people became leaders and practitioners of these organizing and transformational skills, forming a dispersed pool of resources for disparate transformational activities over the last many decades. The high purpose, tremendous passion, propitious timing, evocative non-specificity and intense community of OWS attracted a wide variety of these folks to its various centers of activity – the Occupations themselves – and into diverse support, leadership, and teaching roles. And then much was learned, experienced, created, modified… Had there been no past movement activities generating this pool of experience and skill, the Occupy movement would have looked very different indeed. And now the Occupy movement itself has become part of that ongoing learning, deepening, evolving collective experience…

As Occupy encampments are broken up by authorities, various commentators wonder if the movement is falling apart. They forget that through the activities of OWS in the last several months, tens of thousands of people have not only been inspired but have also taken leaps in awareness, experience and skill and that new leaders have emerged and new networks and groups have formed and new questions are being asked by newly focused and empowered citizens. The fact that this development is diffuse and nonlinear does not mean it does not exist. It only means that mainstream eyes will not necessarily recognize the new forms in which it will surface, over and over and over, expanding and adapting as it goes.

As one OWS sign insightfully said – in words whose significance not everyone will grasp – “This is a movement, not a protest.”

I have a feeling we ain't seen nothin' yet…

Blessings on the Journey. It has been a long time.

Coheartedly,
Tom

Read full post with sources.

2011/12/122011/12/12

DefDog: Washington’s Integrity Part N to the Nth

03 Economy, 07 Other Atrocities, 09 Justice, 11 Society, Commerce, Corruption, Government, Law Enforcement, Money, Banks & Concentrated Wealth, Power Behind-the-Scenes/Special Interests

More of the lack of integrity and the bilking of the middle class…..

Mr. Corzine Goes to Washington, With No Pull

William D. Cohan

Bloomberg.com, 11 December 2011

When it comes to shining a light on the cozy relationships between Wall Street and Washington, and how the rich and powerful get access to things the rest of us don’t, there can never be too many juicy examples.

Last month, thanks to Bloomberg Markets magazine, we were treated to the excellent story about how former Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson met with a bunch of bankers and hedge fund managers in New York during the summer of 2008 and shared with them some of his early thinking on the futures of the mortgage behemoths Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.

Then, last week, Jon Corzine, the former chief executive officer of the defunct MF Global Inc. with a gold-plated resume — he was also a senior partner of Goldman Sachs Group Inc. and a U.S. senator and governor of New Jersey — testified before the House Agriculture Committee about his often-successful campaign to thwart the efforts of Washington regulators to enact rules that he and MF Global didn’t like.

Read full story.

Journal: Politics & Intelligence–Partners Only When Integrity is Central to Both

Journal: Reflections on Integrity UPDATED + Integrity RECAP

2011/12/12

Chuck Spinney: Bombing Iran . . . Soon

04 Inter-State Conflict, 05 Iran, 08 Wild Cards, 10 Security, 11 Society, Corruption, DoD, Government, IO Deeds of War, Military

by FRANKLIN C. SPINNEY

Counterpunch, December 12, 2011

The arguments for attacking Iran are crazy, like those for attacking Iraq in response to 9-11. But that does not mean such an attack by the American and/or the Israelis will not occur.

Indeed, I think the political pressure for such an attack is increasing. My reasons for saying this are as follows:

On 11 October, Patrick Seale wrote a very important essay, Will Israel Bomb Iran. Seale described secret internal deliberations in the Israeli government over the twin questions of (1) how short a time window existed for Israel to launch a sneak attack on Iran and (2) how to suck in the United States into supporting such an attack, even if an Israeli attack was launched without US approval or if the US was kept in ignorance beforehand? Seale, who is extremely well connected and very knowledgeable on the Middle Eastern affairs, also reported the Americans knew of the Israeli discussions, and the idea of Israeli decision makers thinking their window of opportunity was closing was causing alarm in Washington.

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2011/12/122011/12/12

Steven Aftergood: CIA Classifies Open Source Works

04 Education, 07 Other Atrocities, Corruption, Cultural Intelligence, Director of National Intelligence et al (IC), Government, Intelligence (government), IO Impotency, Methods & Process, Officers Call

Charter of Open Source Org is Classified, CIA Says

Open Source Works, which is the CIA’s in-house open source analysis component, is devoted to intelligence analysis of unclassified, open source information. Oddly, however, the directive that established Open Source Works is classified, as is the charter of the organization. In fact, CIA says the very existence of any such records is a classified fact.

“The CIA can neither confirm nor deny the existence or nonexistence of records responsive to your request,” wrote Susan Viscuso, CIA Information and Privacy Coordinator, in a November 29 response to a Freedom of Information Act request from Jeffrey Richelson of the National Security Archive for the Open Source Works directive and charter.

“The fact of the existence or nonexistence of requested records is currently and properly classified and is intelligence sources and methods information that is protected from disclosure,” Dr. Viscuso wrote.

This is a surprising development since Open Source Works — by definition — does not engage in clandestine collection of intelligence. Rather, it performs analysis based on unclassified, open source materials.

Thus, according to a November 2010 CIA report, Open Source Works “was charged by the [CIA] Director for Intelligence with drawing on language-trained analysts to mine open-source information for new or alternative insights on intelligence issues. Open Source Works’ products, based only on open source information, do not represent the coordinated views of the Central Intelligence Agency.”

As such, there is no basis for treating Open Source Works as a covert, unacknowledged intelligence organization. It isn’t one.

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