Communities of Practice – Page 1347 – Public Intelligence Blog

New Details Emerge in Salomi Hostage Case: High Drama in HTS

by John Stanton

Observers indicate that two individuals in HTS leadership positions on the ground in Iraq—Lieutenant Colonel Byrd (Program Management Office – FWD) and Michael Goains, GG-15 (Theater Coordination Element) had direct knowledge of Issa Salomi's prior forays outside Camp Liberty/Victory Base Complex in Iraq unaccompanied by his teammates (team designation IZ-02,) or US military personnel. Salomi was apparently taken by an Iraqi insurgent group in January 2010 and a video of him recently appeared in global media outlets in February 2010.

Observers have also pointed out that Salomi is not, in fact, a contractor but is instead a temporary US Army Civilian employee. In 2009, HTS reverted to a government program and contractors were forced to choose between leaving or converting to US government civilian status.

“There is so much drama within the HTS program right now that it is unbelievable. Many, many people are being fired, rearranged and moved around due to management incompetence and personality problems,” said observers. “The amount of money being squandered is ridiculous.”

Continue reading “Journal: Human Terrain Team (HTT)–Drama Part III”

2010/02/072010/02/07

Journal: Iraqi Insurgents Capture Human Terrain Team (HTT) Member Issa T. Salomi

Academia, Military, Peace Intelligence

Full Story Online

Steve Fondacaro and Montgomery Clough, senior program management of the US Army's Human Terrain System (HTS), were warned as early as 2007 that Human Terrain Team members in Iraq and Afghanistan would become prey for insurgent groups. They were advised repeatedly that training must emphasize the dangerous environment HTS employees would be operating in. That training needed to focus on practices and procedures for handling life threatening situations to include kidnapping.

Issa Salomi, a 60 year old HTT member operating in a combat zone, was taken in January 2010 by an Iraqi insurgent group and a video of him was released on the Net in February 2010 by the same group. This tragic event drives home, once again, the core failings of the Human Terrain Team System: the inability to find qualified personnel, to train them properly and to, quite simply, take care of them. Some allege that many team leaders and HTS management itself have no clue where many of their teams are. “Some HTT members disappear for days and then return.”

Continue reading “Journal: Iraqi Insurgents Capture Human Terrain Team (HTT) Member Issa T. Salomi”

2010/02/072010/02/07

Journal: Haiti Update 7 February 2010

Non-Governmental, Peace Intelligence

Haiti: Building Back Better – and Beyond

We already know that some 150,000 people were killed, 200,000 were injured and one million more lost their homes. After all the collapsed buildings are finally removed, this earthquake may be among the three or four worst disasters ever recorded anywhere on earth in terms of loss of life and injury.

Lessons Learned from Past:
Continue reading “Journal: Haiti Update 7 February 2010”

2010/02/052010/02/05

Reference: Social Search 101

Collaboration Zones, Communities of Practice, Methods & Process, Tools

Directory & Links

Description: A hot linked and annotated list of social search systems.

Feature text below:

One of the first steps in Strategic Social Networking is to know where to look for information from social systems. Google, Microsoft, and Yahoo include content from high-profile social content sources like Facebook. Here at SSN, we need to look for fresh social information from different angles, from different services.

Phi Beta Iota: Stephen E. Arnold has been the “virtual CTO” for the modern Open Source Intelligence (OSINT) community and is generally ten years ahead of the private sector and twenty years ahead of any government.

2010/02/052011/10/22

Journal: Greedy Cultish Goldman Sachs Looting America and Corrupting Democracy

03 Economy, 09 Justice, 11 Society, Commerce, Commercial Intelligence, Ethics, Government

Here are two excellent items on the greedy cultish institutional culture of Goldman Sachs, which has its own revolving door in and out of the Federal government.

Chuck

Background from November 2009

November 8, 2009

I'm doing ‘God's work'. Meet Mr Goldman Sachs

Average pay this recessionary year for the 30,000 staff is expected to be a record $700,000. Top earners will get tens of millions, several hundred thousand times more than a cleaner at the firm. When they have finished getting “filthy rich by 40”, as the company saying goes, these alpha dogs don’t put their feet up. They parachute into some of the most senior political posts in the US and beyond, prompting accusations that they “rule the world”. Number 85 Broad Street is the home of Goldman Sachs.

New focused report:

Goldman Sachs And The Republicans

Simon Johnson, Baseline Scenario, 2 Feb 2010

Goldman and the other big Wall Street firms have already won big on this round. They will plow even more money into defeating political candidates who have opposed them – for example, on credit card legislation. The Republicans see this coming and are rubbing their hands with glee.

With their incentive structure intact – they get the upside and regular folk get the downside – and their closest friends on their way back to power, Big Finance is ready to roll into the next great global boom-bust cycle.

Phi Beta Iota: President Obama still does not get it–he was funded to keep Senator McCain out of the office, now he is going to be unfunded to put the original Republican sell-outs (Senator Phil Gamm R-TX et al) back in. What the President especially does not get is that the only way to put Goldman Sachs back in its box is to let We the People out of ours. Electoral Reform in time for November 2010 (first four elements) and then 2012 does three things: 1) assures him of a second term; 2) buries the two-party tyranny; and 3) restores honest civil reality-based give and take to our democracy.

2010/02/042010/02/04

Journal: NIGHTWATCH Extract France & Citizenship

08 Wild Cards, 10 Security, 11 Society, Communities of Practice, Cultural Intelligence

NIGHTWATCH HOME. France: For the record. Prime Minister Francois Fillon said on 3 February he would sign a decree barring a Moroccan man from receiving French citizenship because of his insistence that his French wife conform to the strictest Islamic practices. Fillon said that the man “has no place in our country.”

The French authorities describe the case as being about a religious radical who requires his wife to wear the burqa (the head to toe covering with eye slots); he insists the separation of men and women in his own home, and he refuses to shake the hands of women,” Fillon said.

On 2 February, Immigration Minister Eric Besson said that during checks into the man's application for citizenship, he explicitly stated that he would never allow his wife to leave the house without wearing a full veil and that he believed a woman is “an inferior being.”

Earlier this week a parliamentary panel called for a law to ban the wearing of full Islamic veils in public institutions such as schools, hospitals and transport. “It's French law,” Fillon told Europe 1 radio. “The Code Civile has for a very long time provided that naturalization could be refused to someone who does not respect the values of the French Republic.

A Reader could conclude that political correctness in France favors the Republic’s interests over the individual’s right of self expression and even personal religious observance. In this case, the Republic places respect for women and women’s rights over male dominance prescribed in religious texts. This is a study in democracy.

Continue reading “Journal: NIGHTWATCH Extract France & Citizenship”

2010/02/032010/02/03

Journal: The Twitter Train Has Left the Station

Collective Intelligence, Communities of Practice, Mobile, Real Time

Hundreds of thousands of people now rely on Twitter every day for their business. Food trucks and restaurants around the world tell patrons about daily food specials. Corporations use the service to handle customer service issues. Starbucks, Dell, Ford, JetBlue and many more companies use Twitter to offer discounts and coupons to their customers. Public relations firms, ad agencies, schools, the State Department — even President Obama — now use Twitter and other social networks to share information.

There are communication and scholarly uses. Right now, an astronaut, floating 250 miles above the Earth, is using Twitter and conversing with people all over the globe, answering both mundane and scientific questions about living on a space station.

Most importantly, Twitter is transforming the nature of news, the industry from which Mr. Packer reaps his paycheck. The news media are going through their most robust transformation since the dawn of the printing press, in large part due to the Internet and services like Twitter. After this metamorphosis takes place, everyone will benefit from the information moving swiftly around the globe.