Communities of Practice – Page 1415 – Public Intelligence Blog

Nation At Risk: Policy Makers Need Better Information to Protect the Country

For all the nation has invested in national security in the last several years, we remain vulnerable to terrorist attack and emerging national security threats because we have not adequately improved our ability to know what we know about these threats.

Phi Beta Iota: The Markle Foundation means well, but like most in the two-party tyranny and its circle of “fellow travelers” this report misses two big points: first, Washington does not lack for information, it lacks for integrity. Second, with integrity, there would not only be plenty of money for both Open Source Intelligence (OSINT) within government, and Public Intelligence outside of government, but we would also recognize, as the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff recently noted with commendable integrity: it is our mis-behavior that is the threat. We KNOW what the ten high-level threats to humanity are, LtGen Dr. Brent Scowcroft helped prioritize them. INTEGRITY. One word. Without it, no amount of information or intelligence will do. Markle, and everyone else, need a strategic analytic model as well as the proven process for doing decision-support–absent that, an appreciation for the essential role that integrity plays, they are as irrelevant or counterproductive as are all courtiers to any corrupt government.

Tip of the Hat: Docuticker from Secrecy News.

2009/09/062009/09/10

Journal: Ralph Peters on Stifling of General McChrystal

Ethics, Military

O's Afghan woes

White House stifles general

September 3, 2009

The classified status report from Afghanistan by Gen. Stanley McChrystal was censored by the White House before its submission. As a result, it's all bun and no burger.

According to multiple (angry) sources, McChrystal — our top soldier on the ground — intended to ask for 28,000 more US troops. A presidential hatchet man directed the general not to make the request: Troop increases would be “addressed separately.”

. . . . . . .

Cooking the political books doesn't win wars. It didn't work for the Bush administration, and it won't work for Obama. We shouldn't waste another American life without a clear strategy our president will back with his full authority.

When the White House silences the generals in the field, it condemns our troops to the silence of the grave.

Phi Beta Iota: Old news but new anger. The “hatchet man” was Secretary of Defense Robert Gates himself, calling an urgent meeting in Europe. read the full story from August as published in Foreign Policy. Lies kill ones comrades. When the Secretary of Defense is the point man for gutting his own general in the field, it is time for the Secretary to dig deep and either resign on principle, or tell the truth to the public and Congress. The Obama Administration, and we specifically include General James Jones, USMC (Ret) is an extension of the ideological fantasy land that characterizes the two-party tyranny that represents Wall Street rather than the U.S. citizen, voter, and taxpayer. It is high time we restored the integrity of our Cabinet officials, demanded integrity of our Congress and White House, and demanded reality-driven policy that is crafted with the best interests of the American people rather than Wall Street. Zbigniew Brzezinski is behind most of this, and is long overdue for the same war criminal status that Henry Kissinger has enjoyed for the past decade, ever since being chased out of France by a warrant for his arrest.

2009/09/062009/09/06

Journal: EarthGame–What DoD & NATO Want, What Can Be Done Faster, Better, Cheaper

Earth Intelligence, Methods & Process, Military, Peace Intelligence, Policies, Policy, Reform, Strategy, Technologies, Threats, Tools

Sentient world: war games on the grandest scale

Mark Baard

23rd June 2007

Perhaps your real life is so rich you don't have time for another.

Even so, the US Department of Defense (DOD) may already be creating a copy of you in an alternate reality to see how long you can go without food or water, or how you will respond to televised propaganda.

The DOD is developing a parallel to Planet Earth, with billions of individual “nodes” to reflect every man, woman, and child this side of the dividing line between reality and AR.

Called the Sentient World Simulation (SWS), it will be a “synthetic mirror of the real world with automated continuous calibration with respect to current real-world information”, according to a concept paper for the project.

Full Story Online

A ‘Second Life’ for NATO Staffers

Katie Drummond

September 4, 2009

This isn’t the first time NATO has toyed with virtual training programs. In February, they requested a computerized replica of Afghanistan, complete with data on Afghan economics, politics and culture, to be used by war planners in decision-making considerations. And two years ago, the Navy asked for the same thing, but with Iraq as the targeted 3D nation.

Phi Beta Iota: EarthGame by Medard Gabel does all this and more, for no more than $2 million a year, with one caveat: it is unaffordable and unachievable if DoD and NATO insist on everything being Top Secret.

2009/09/062009/09/06

Journal: Petition for Peace Engineering

02 Diplomacy, 10 Security, 11 Society, Civil Society, Ethics, Peace Intelligence, Reform, Strategy, Worth A Look

The average American is now in motion. The Independent movement has reached critical mass, and the public recognition that everything the government is doing lacks a strategic analytic rationale as well as–in many cases–a moral rationale, is gathering force.

The below message captured our attention. Note the “social engineering” of the military-industrial complex that has labored for decades to connect jobs to war, patronage to war, bribes to war, high crimes and midemeanors (betrayal of the public trust) to war. The call for social engineering for peace is, in our view, a strong signal that public intelligence is now becoming more commonplace, but we make the observation that the “lag time” between Congressional and Executive high crimes and misdemeanors, and the public discovery, analytis, outrage, and action, is still too great. Public intelligence is going to have to do something secret intelligence cannot do: develop global REAL-TIME and NEAR-REAL-TIME information-sharing and sense-making, and do this across all ten high-level threats and all twelve policies that must be harmonized across all boundaries.

Continue reading “Journal: Petition for Peace Engineering”

2009/08/312011/10/22

Journal: 9-11 Truth Movement–Hanging Fire, Still Explosive

09 Justice, 10 Security, 11 Society, Civil Society, Collective Intelligence, Government, Media

THE STORY BEHIND 9/11: HIT OR MYTH? TAKING ON THE TRUTHERS

By MAXINE SHEN August 28, 2009

Read Full Story Online First. Then below Response (provided here because original is behind a Facebook Password Access page).:

The 9/11 Official Story Runs Out of Steam?

by Sander Hicks (pictured in insert by Post at right)

(NEW YORK) You know the world is really coming to an end when the New York Post lets this reporter, a leading 9/11 Truth investigator, be the lead source in their review of the new anti-Truther documentary. The National Geographic Channel’s “9/11: Science and Conspiracy” debuts tonight, Monday, August 31. It is so pathetic, it should be scored a victory for the truth movement.

“9/11 Science and Conspiracy” is fundamentally-misconceived, half hearted, poorly planned, slapped together, badly written, mis-cas, and self-defeating. It contains four scientific “experiments” pulled off in the New Mexico desert by a bunch of pyrotechnic geeks, the Energetic Materials Research and Testing Center (EMRTC).

Continue reading “Journal: 9-11 Truth Movement–Hanging Fire, Still Explosive”

2009/08/312009/08/31

Journal: True Cost of Hybrids, Dumb Government

03 Economy, 05 Energy, Commerce, Earth Intelligence, Government, True Cost Meme

Steve Gorman

Sun Aug 30, 2009

As hybrid cars gobble rare metals, shortage looms

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) – The Prius hybrid automobile is popular for its fuel efficiency, but its electric motor and battery guzzle rare earth metals, a little-known class of elements found in a wide range of gadgets and consumer goods. . . . . . . .Worldwide demand for rare earths, covering 15 entries on the periodic table of elements, is expected to exceed supply by some 40,000 tonnes annually in several years unless major new production sources are developed.

Phi Beta Iota: The peresistent refusal of the White House and Congress in particular, all governments in general, to create strategic centers that can provide unclassified decision-support in the context of a strategic analytic model that embraces “true cost” accounting and “cross-policy cost harmonization” means that the USA in particular, and all governments generally, are “dumb” and are therefore in automatic betrayal of the public trust. Current references: Intelligence for Everyone; Fixing the White House; Human Intelligence; The Ultimate Hack.

2009/08/312009/08/31

Journal: Facebook Toys with Facsism

11 Society, Civil Society, Cultural Intelligence, Ethics

By VIRGINIA HEFFERNAN

Published: August 26, 2009

The Medium:Facebook Exodus

Leif Harmsen, once a Facebook user, now crusades against it. Having dismissed his mother’s snap judgment of the site (“Facebook is the devil”), Harmsen now passionately agrees. He says, not entirely in jest, that he considers it a repressive regime akin to North Korea, and sells T-shirts with the words “Shut Your Facebook.” What especially galls him is the commercialization and corporate regulation of personal and social life.