Communities of Practice – Page 654 – Public Intelligence Blog

Jihadist Gains in Iraq Blindside American Spies

First Crimea, now Iraq. Why does America's $50 billion intelligence community keep getting taken by surprise?

Shane Harris

Foreign Policy, 12 June 2014

nited States intelligence agencies were caught by surprise when fighters from the Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham (ISIS) seized two major Iraqi cities this week and sent Iraqi defense forces fleeing, current and former U.S. officials said Thursday. With U.S. troops long gone from the country, Washington didn't have the spies on the ground or the surveillance gear in the skies necessary to predict when and where the jihadist group would strike.

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2014/06/142014/06/14

Schwartz Report: Irish Catholic Church Rents Babies (Taken Away from Unwed Mothers) for Drug Trials, Puts the Dead Ones in a Septic Tank — Over 800 of Them…

06 Family, 07 Health, 07 Other Atrocities, 11 Society, Civil Society, Commerce

This story broke almost a week ago, but it was so inflammatory that I decided not to run it immediately. I wanted to be sure it was accurate. Nearly 800 dead babies found in a septic tank on the grounds of a Roman Catholic home for “unwed mothers” was just too damning. As time as gone on however the story just gets worse. Here is the current state of the situation. This is part of the trend of the imploding Catholic Church. And I suspect there will be more revelations to come.

The Catholic Irish Babies Scandal: It Gets Much Worse
MARY ELIZABETH WILLIAMS – AlterNet (U.S.)

It gets worse. One week after revelations of how over the span of 35 years, a County Galway home for unwed mothers cavalierly disposed of the bodies of nearly 800 babies and toddlers [3] on a site that held a septic tank, new reports are leveling a whole different set of charges about what happened to the children of those Irish homes.

2014/06/132014/06/12

Steve Aftergood: US Army Reflections on the Value of Military History

Cultural Intelligence, Military

US Army Reflections on the Value of Military History

Far from being a subject of merely antiquarian interest, military history is an essential tool for training of soldiers and for institutional accountability, according to newly updated Army doctrine.

But only if it is done right.

In Military History Operations (ATP 1-20, June 2014), the Army discusses what military history is for, its development over time, and the proper way to produce it.

Some excerpts:

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2014/06/132014/06/12

Stephen E. Arnold: Libraries Hurt If Net Neutrality Dies

Civil Society, Ethics, IO Impotency

Libraries Hurt If Net Neutrality Dies

The Washington Post blog The Switch interviewed the American Library Association’s Director of Government Relations Lynne Bradley in the article “Why The Death of Net Neutrality Would Be A Disaster For Libraries” about how libraries would be adversely affected without net neutrality. As public institutions with most of their resources online, libraries rely on free Web to serve their users and provide information. With budgets already stretched to their limits, libraries will not be able to afford to pay to ISPs. More people are going to the public libraries to have access to the Internet and other digital services. If that is taken away, not only will libraries suffer, but public education institutions will also suffer.

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2014/06/122014/06/16

Andrew Garfield: Two New Surveys Suggest Ghani Will Win the Presidency of Afghanistan

08 Wild Cards, Civil Society, Corruption, Cultural Intelligence, Ethics, Government, Peace Intelligence

June 12, 2014

For further information contact

Andrew Garfield, 571 228-4813

Two Surveys in Afghanistan Suggest Ghani Will Win Presidency

Both telephone and face-to-face polls favor Ghani over Abdullah in Saturday’s Election

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2014/06/122014/06/11

Jean Lievens: Self-Determination as Anti-Extractivism – Indigenous Resistance is Changing World Politics (and Countering Predatory Capitalism)

Civil Society, Cultural Intelligence, Earth Intelligence, Ethics

Self-Determination as Anti-Extractivism: How Indigenous Resistance Challenges World Politics

Written by Manuela Picq

Monday, 02 June 2014 19:46

Indigeneity is an unusual way to think about International Relations (IR). Most studies of world politics ignore Indigenous perspectives, which are rarely treated as relevant to thinking about the international (Shaw 2008; Beier 2009).

Yet Indigenous peoples are engaging in world politics with a dynamism and creativity that defies the silences of our discipline (Morgan 2011). In Latin America, Indigenous politics has gained international legitimacy, influencing policy for over two decades (Cott 2008; Madrid 2012). Now, Indigenous political movements are focused on resisting extractive projects on autonomous territory from the Arctic to the Amazon (Banerjee 2012; Sawyer and Gómez 2012). Resistance has led to large mobilized protests, invoked international law, and enabled alternative mechanisms of authority.

Continue reading “Jean Lievens: Self-Determination as Anti-Extractivism – Indigenous Resistance is Changing World Politics (and Countering Predatory Capitalism)”

2014/06/122014/06/11

Eagle: Practical Guide to Collapse and Revolution

Civil Society, Collective Intelligence, Cultural Intelligence, Ethics

300 Million Talons... — 300 Million Talons…

A Practical Utopian’s Guide to the Coming Collapse

David Graeber

[from The Baffler No. 22, 2013]

What is a revolution? We used to think we knew. Revolutions were seizures of power by popular forces aiming to transform the very nature of the political, social, and economic system in the country in which the revolution took place, usually according to some visionary dream of a just society. Nowadays, we live in an age when, if rebel armies do come sweeping into a city, or mass uprisings overthrow a dictator, it’s unlikely to have any such implications; when profound social transformation does occur—as with, say, the rise of feminism—it’s likely to take an entirely different form. It’s not that revolutionary dreams aren’t out there. But contemporary revolutionaries rarely think they can bring them into being by some modern-day equivalent of storming the Bastille.

At moments like this, it generally pays to go back to the history one already knows and ask: Were revolutions ever really what we thought them to be? For me, the person who has asked this most effectively is the great world historian Immanuel Wallerstein. He argues that for the last quarter millennium or so, revolutions have consisted above all of planetwide transformations of political common sense.

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