Category: Communities of Practice

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Teachers: Our Front Line at Home, Abused

Academia, Civil Society, Cultural Intelligence
DefDog Recommends....

What would taking $5B from Defense and put into nation wide teacher's salaries (not administrators who are grossly overpaid in comparison to their teachers) do?

The High Cost of Low Teacher Salaries

By DAVE EGGERS and NÍNIVE CLEMENTS CALEGARI

The New York Times, April 30, 2011

WHEN we don’t get the results we want in our military endeavors, we don’t blame the soldiers. We don’t say, “It’s these lazy soldiers and their bloated benefits plans! That’s why we haven’t done better in Afghanistan!” No, if the results aren’t there, we blame the planners. We blame the generals, the secretary of defense, the Joint Chiefs of Staff. No one contemplates blaming the men and women fighting every day in the trenches for little pay and scant recognition.

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And yet in education we do just that. When we don’t like the way our students score on international standardized tests, we blame the teachers. When we don’t like the way particular schools perform, we blame the teachers and restrict their resources.

Compare this with our approach to our military: when results on the ground are not what we hoped, we think of ways to better support soldiers. We try to give them better tools, better weapons, better protection, better training. And when recruiting is down, we offer incentives.

Full article….

Phi Beta Iota: It is helpful to compare the salaries of teachers, responsible for the future of the country, and financial arbitragers allowed to destroy the entire economy without penalty.

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Integrity, lacking in the White House…..

Corruption, Cultural Intelligence, Government, IO Impotency, Media
DefDog Recommends....

Original Story:

The hip, transparent and social media-loving Obama administration is showing its analog roots. And maybe even some hypocrisy highlights.

White House officials have banished one of the best political reporters in the country from the approved pool of journalists covering presidential visits to the Bay Area for using now-standard multimedia tools to gather the news.

The Chronicle's Carla Marinucci – who, like many contemporary reporters, has a phone with video capabilities on her at all times –shot some protesters interrupting an Obama fundraiser at the St. Regis Hotel.

Read more….

UPDATE:

Update: In a pants-on-fire moment, the White House press office today denied anyone there had issued threats to remove Carla Marinucci and possibly other Hearst reporters from the press pool covering the President in the Bay Area.

Chronicle editor Ward Bushee called the press office on its fib:

Read more….

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Chuck Spinney: Obama’s Failure of Intelligence & Integrity

Corruption, Cultural Intelligence, Government, IO Impotency, Policies
Chuck Spinney

My friend Jeff Madrick, and old fashioned liberal democrat in the best sense of the term, has penned a pithy analysis of the anti-empirical madness now dominating the contemporary American political economy.  Jeff concludes that the Right ignores its track record, particularly regarding the clear economic effects of tax cuts, and is rarely challenged on the issue.  Madrick is correct.  The question is why?

More precisely, why is political debate shaped more by a new dark age of irrational romantic ideology than the by the rationality and empiricism bequeathed to us by the Enlightenment and the Scientific Revolution?

For what it worth, here is my answer:  Money.  (What follows is my view, and should not be attributed to Jeff.)

Look no further than at a Democratic Party that has sold out, and in so doing, forgot its roots, having grown arrogant, effete, and soft in the comfortable aftermath of its dominance under Roosevelt, Truman, and Johnson, each of whom, whatever his faults, was at least a fighter.  The real problem corrupting our warped politics has less to do with the Right Wing Wrecking Crew than with the rise of wimpish neo-liberal and pro-defense Democrats (e.g., like Presidents Carter, Clinton, and Obama), who are now being reinforced by the so-called progressives, who are willing to go along with Obama's strategy of appeasing the right wing wreckers, rationalizing that any alternative to Obama will be worse.  A more reliable pathway to strategic defeat is hard to imagine.   Maybe the wrecking crew's winner-take-all politics of fang and claw ought to be answered by a more principled politics of fang an claw.

Continue reading “Chuck Spinney: Obama's Failure of Intelligence & Integrity”

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Four Weapons Against Humanity

07 Other Atrocities, 11 Society, Commerce, Commercial Intelligence, Corporations, Corruption, Counter-Oppression/Counter-Dictatorship Practices, Cultural Intelligence, Government, InfoOps (IO), IO Secrets, Military, Power Behind-the-Scenes/Special Interests

 

Venessa Miemis

The law doth punish man or woman
That steals the goose from off the commons,
But lets the greater villain loose
That steals the commons from the goose.
– 16th century English rhyme

March 23, 2011

Four weapons

Posted by leavergirl under civ, problem of power, traps

Anthropologists have noted three main pathways to power. I say there are four. And out of these pathways come four types of weapons used against us, and four types of weapon industries. One of these has been obvious to all, two became more and more visible as the 20th century progressed, and the last needs far greater exposure than it has received. What are those weapons? What are the main ways to inflict damage on human beings by those who seek to dominate?

Read concise elegant discussion of each of the following:

1.  Physical Weapons  ..  2.  Economic Weapons  ..  3.  Ideological Weapons including Religion & Rote Education  ..  4.  Government as a Weapon

Phi Beta Iota: There are two literatures that are relevant here, the first represented by such books as Tragedy & Hope and its introductory companion the Naked Capitalist, and the second by a less well known but amply robust literature on the sovereign individual.  A general strike and a refusal to pay taxes are the legitimate last resort of an abused public.  Similarly, a public demand for Electoral Reform, absent which the legitimacy of any government is ended in the eyes of all, can be equally compelling.  The times they are a'changing.  We have high hopes for 2012 as the year of awakening and reconciliation based on truth.

See Also:

Worth a Look: Book Review Lists (Negative)

Worth a Look: Book Review Lists (Positive)

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9/11 Questions Linger Ten Years Later

07 Other Atrocities, 09 Justice, 11 Society, Civil Society, Corruption, Cultural Intelligence, Government, IO Secrets, Military

For Activists, Architects, 9/11 Questions Linger Ten Years Later

GLORIA TATUM 4-30-2011 Atlanta Progressive News

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With additional reporting by Matthew Cardinale, News Editor.

[The purpose of this article is not to hypothesize what the real story behind the Towers' collapse is, but to address what we find to be reasonable and compelling questions about the government's official account.]

(APN) ATLANTA — It will be ten years since September 11, 2001, in just a few months.  And yet some of the most basic and fundamental questions about what happened that day–based upon physics and the forensic science of structural engineering–in the collapse of three towers at the World Trade Center in New York, still linger.

Groups such as Architects & Engineers for 9/11 Truth (A&E), founded by Richard Gage; and We Are Change Atlanta want to re-examine the evidence regarding the collapse of all three buildings.

Continue reading “9/11 Questions Linger Ten Years Later”

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Bin Laden Show 76: Egyptian Faction Betrays BL

04 Inter-State Conflict, 07 Other Atrocities, 08 Wild Cards, 09 Terrorism, 11 Society, Cultural Intelligence, IO Multinational, IO Sense-Making, Non-Governmental

Al Qaida: In a recent meeting, presumably in Pakistan, al Qaida's council elected Saifal Adel (Abu Saif), one of the early members of al-Qaida, as chief of the party Command of Control for the time being, sources told the Pakistani news service, The News. However, Muhammad Mustafa Yamni is likely to be made al-Qaida chief after a grand consultation. Yamni is currently residing in an African country.

Saifal Adel is an Egyptian and has served at key posts in Egypt terrorist groups. He worked with Ayman al-Zawahiri in the al-Jihad group of Egypt. Zawahiri was bin Laden's number two. The News reported that Zawahiri would continue holding his posts of al-Qaida patron, and the chief of the al-Qaida Militant Command. Zawahiri also will monitor the international contacts, a task that had been done by Saifal Adel.

The News' sources reported that Adnan al-Kashri had been placed in charge of general information affairs. Muhammad Nasir al-Washi (Abu Nasir) is now in charge of al-Qaida Africa affairs and Muhammad Adam Khan Afghani was appointed to direct Afghanistan-Waziristan affairs. Fahad al-Qava had been appointed as the Urgent Operational Commander.

Comment: The day after bin Laden's death, an Asia Times on Line analyst reported that the Saudi (bin Laden) faction and the Egyptian (Zawahiri) faction had had a falling out over leadership and policy direction. The full details of the policy split are not known, but what is known is that Zawahiri publicly supported the Pakistan Taliban in their moves to try to overthrow the government of Pakistan, under Musharraf and under the elected civilians. This included the assassination of Benazir Bhutto.

Bin Laden never associated himself with that policy. Bin Laden seems to have favored sensational attacks against Western targets over consolidating a base in Pakistan by taking over the government.

The Egyptians marginalized bin Laden. The lack of security and staff at Abbottabad – a single body guard – indicates bin Laden was a figurehead and a symbol, more than a hands-on commander. The computer disks and thumb drives, in this theory, call to mind Hitler with his war maps in the bunker in Berlin.

According to the Asia Times report, the Egyptian faction delivered the identity and movements of bin Laden's trusted courier to US intelligence and the courier was aware that he was being tracked so that he could lead US intelligence to the Abbottabad house. The courier was a key actor in an al Qaida intelligence operation to eliminate the Saudi faction and permit the Egyptians to take control.

The operation appears to have worked. The leadership selections, reported by The News, support the hypothesis of betrayal by the Egyptians. No Saudis are in senior leadership positions. Until the promotion of Abu Saif and other non-Saudis to leadership positions, the Asia Times report was just one hypothesis.

Based on statements by Zawahiri, al Qaida may be expected to help the Pakistani Taliban to try to seize control in Pakistan. For them, Pakistan is the objective, not Afghanistan.

NIGHTWATCH KGS Home

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Bin Laden Show 75: Bin Laden Transfigured

07 Other Atrocities, Corruption, Cultural Intelligence, Government, IO Impotency

Phil Giraldi

Osama bin Laden Transfigured

by Phil Giraldi, 12 May 2011

AntiWar.com

The execution-style slaying of Osama bin Laden has been touted as a great success for United States intelligence operatives and also for the special operations soldiers, sailors, and airmen who executed the plan. But it also leaves one feeling a bit uneasy about where this is all going now that the world’s most wanted fugitive is dead. A retrospective look at the fifteen year manhunt mounted by the US government estimates that it cost something like $3 trillion to kill him. An effort is being made to confirm that bin Laden was still a very dangerous man, plotting with his associates and “coming up with ideas” about attacking transportation hubs in the US, but there is little to suggest that the aging terrorist was well positioned to mount any effective operations against anyone. As he relied on couriers to communicate his wishes he was not even able to send instructions or advice to his remaining associates in under a week, hardly qualifying him as a hands-on master of terror.

. . . . . .

But what is particularly disquieting about the bin Laden story is how it is being used by some media commentators and politicians to support the reactionary war on terror policies of both George W. Bush and Barack Obama. In the press and on Capitol Hill there have been suggestions that the successful tracking of bin Laden came about because of torture, that the key information that led to his hideout in Pakistan was developed in a CIA secret prison. Demagogic politicians like congressman Peter King are extolling the virtues of enhanced interrogation and calling for more of it.

Read full article….

Philip M. Giraldi, Ph.D. is a contributing editor to The American Conservative and executive director of the Council for the National Interest He is a former CIA counter-terrorism specialist and military intelligence officer who served 18 years overseas in Turkey, Italy, Germany, and Spain.