Category: Communities of Practice

Posted on

Poverty, Not Terrorism, Is Threat #1

01 Agriculture, 01 Poverty, 03 Economy, 06 Family, 07 Other Atrocities, 08 Wild Cards, 09 Justice, 11 Society, Civil Society, Corruption, Peace Intelligence
Chuck Spinney Recommends....

The price of food is at the heart of this wave of revolutions

No one saw the uprisings coming, but their deeper cause isn't hard to fathom

By Peter Popham
Independent, Sunday, 27 February 2011

Revolution is breaking out all over. As Gaddafi marshals his thugs and mercenaries for a last-ditch fight in Tripoli, several died as protests grew more serious in Iraq. Saudi Arabia's King Abdullah tried to bribe his people into docility by splashing out $35bn on housing, social services and education. Across the water in Bahrain the release of political prisoners failed to staunch the uprising. In Iran, President Ahmadinejad crowed about chaos in the Arab world, but said nothing about the seething anger in his own backyard; in Yemen, the opposition gathers strength daily.

And it's not just the Middle East. This is an African crisis: Tunisia, where it started, is an African country, and last week in Senegal, a desperate army veteran died after setting fire to himself in front of the presidential palace, emulating Mohamed Bouazizi, the market trader whose self-immolation sparked the revolution in Tunisia. Meanwhile, the spirit of revolt has already leapt like a forest fire to half a dozen other ill-governed African nations, with serious disturbances reported in Mauritania, Gabon, Cameroon and Zimbabwe.   Read more….

See Also:

Continue reading “Poverty, Not Terrorism, Is Threat #1”

Posted on

NIGHTWATCH Essay: Youth, Democracy, & the West

Advanced Cyber/IO, Autonomous Internet, Collective Intelligence, Communities of Practice, Cultural Intelligence, Ethics, Peace Intelligence

NightWatch Essay: Some time ago, David Goldman, purporting to channel Oswald Spengler for Asia Times Online, wrote a farsighted essay [And Spengler is…] that anticipated, predicted and warned that modern impulses in the youth of the Middle East would rise up against conservative institutions to assert a modern definition of being Arab, Berber, Turk, Persian as well as Muslim. He identified the cohorts under 25 as the driving force in these pan-regional impulses.

The events that began in December 2010 in Tunisia seem to have validated parts of Goldman's prophecy. He foresaw the struggle as one between modern educated youth and the conservative, sclerotic Islamic clerisy of mullahs and ayatollahs. In the essay, Spengler did not anticipate an intermediate phase in which the cohorts of modernization battled the stodgy pan Arab socialist authoritarian strong men.

Few prophets live long enough to see even part of their vision come to pass, as has Goldman's in 2011. However, the youth that started the pro-democracy movement lack the experience and shrewdness to plan well. Still, they have spoken the language of human rights, individual worth and elected, accountable government. The words should have been a rallying call to the Western democracies.

Those states that have the maturity and wisdom to help guide the Arab pro-democracy movement are the great western democracies, who else. But, the great democracies in North America and Europe have dithered. President Reagan's beacon on a hill has not shined its light on the Arabs.

Continue reading “NIGHTWATCH Essay: Youth, Democracy, & the West”

Posted on

Army Runs PSYOP on US Senators….

Corruption, Cultural Intelligence, Government, IO Secrets, Military
Chuck Spinney Recommends....

Another blockbuster by Rolling Stone raises a basic question of just who the military views as the real enemy — the threat posed by the Taliban or the threat to its money flow posed by Congress and the American people.

Another Runaway General: Army Deploys Psy-Ops on U.S. Senators

Michael Hastings, Rolling Stone, 23 February 2011

The U.S. Army illegally ordered a team of soldiers specializing in “psychological operations” to manipulate visiting American senators into providing more troops and funding for the war, Rolling Stone has learned – and when an officer tried to stop the operation, he was railroaded by military investigators.

The orders came from the command of Lt. Gen. William Caldwell, a three-star general in charge of training Afghan troops – the linchpin of U.S. strategy in the war. Over a four-month period last year, a military cell devoted to what is known as “information operations” at Camp Eggers in Kabul was repeatedly pressured to target visiting senators and other VIPs who met with Caldwell. When the unit resisted the order, arguing that it violated U.S. laws prohibiting the use of propaganda against American citizens, it was subjected to a campaign of retaliation.

“My job in psy-ops is to play with people’s heads, to get the enemy to behave the way we want them to behave,” says Lt. Colonel Michael Holmes, the leader of the IO unit, who received an official reprimand after bucking orders. “I’m prohibited from doing that to our own people. When you ask me to try to use these skills on senators and congressman, you’re crossing a line.”

The list of targeted visitors was long, according to interviews with members of the IO team and internal documents obtained by Rolling Stone. Those singled out in the campaign included senators John McCain, Joe Lieberman, Jack Reed, Al Franken and Carl Levin; Rep. Steve Israel of the House Appropriations Committee; Adm. Mike Mullen of the Joint Chiefs of Staff; the Czech ambassador to Afghanistan; the German interior minister, and a host of influential think-tank analysts.

Read rest of story….

Posted on

Reference: The Future of the Internet

Advanced Cyber/IO, Autonomous Internet, Collective Intelligence, Communities of Practice
Jon Lebkowsky Bio

Jon Lebkowsky is, among many things, contributing editor of Extreme Democracy (Lulu.com, 2005).  His briefing below brings up many points, among which three stand-out:

1.  There is no lack of intelligence–what is lacking are the tools for achieving extreme democracy in the face of a tsunami of noise and electronic pollution, with five core functional requirements:   gather data, analyze data, generate options, choose/vote, and implement.

2.  The principle challenge to democracy at this point in time is not from governments, but rather from those corporations that presume to “own” the Internet and all content irrespective of who generates it.

3.  Freedom Box (and what we have begun calling the Autonomous Internet) are an alternative–while he does not go into detail it is clear that there is a sufficiency of both money and knowledge to create a distributed Autonomous Internet.

Click on Image to Enlarge

Source of the Graphic

Briefing Online (Downloadable, No Notes)

See Also:

Lebkowsky at Phi Beta Iota

Posted on

Worth a Look: Program on Liberation Technology

Academia, Civil Society, Commerce, Counter-Oppression/Counter-Dictatorship Practices, Government, Technologies, Worth A Look

http://liberationtechnology.stanford.edu

http://twitter.com/Liberationtech

Lying at the intersection of social science, computer science, and engineering, the Program on Liberation Technology seeks to understand how information technology can be used to defend human rights, improve governance, empower the poor, promote economic development, and pursue a variety of other social goods.

See Also:

Autonomous Internet (36)

Posted on

COLLECTIVE IDIOCY…but that’s classified

07 Other Atrocities, Government, Law Enforcement, Military

Hiding Details of Dubious Deal, U.S. Invokes National Security

By ERIC LICHTBLAU and JAMES RISEN

New York Times, Published: February 19, 2011

WASHINGTON — For eight years, government officials turned to Dennis Montgomery, a California computer programmer, for eye-popping technology that he said could catch terrorists. Now, federal officials want nothing to do with him and are going to extraordinary lengths to ensure that his dealings with Washington stay secret.

Phi Beta Iota: Read the entire  sorry tale….not only are all elements of the US Government stupid about contracting, but they do not talk to each other such that truly fraudulent very expensive propositions can make the rounds.  Sadly, this applies to the bulk of DARPA, Irregular Warfare, and “advanced” Science & Technology “research,”  and of course education, health, and what passes for justice–the prison slave farms.  News flash for the White House: demand intelligence–and integrity–save $1 trillion a year.  Duh.