Communities of Practice – Page 802 – Public Intelligence Blog

From what I've read over last few months, some of you may take umbrage with title or narrative of this article.

By Walter Pincus

Washington Post, July 2, 2013, Pg. 13

“For the first time our competence and character are being evaluated by experts and pundits while we fight.”

That was Joint Chiefs Chairman Gen. Martin Dempsey speaking frankly to field-grade officers graduating June 13 from National Defense University (NDU) about what he called “this time of turmoil” when the military is “working hard to adapt to uncertainty and rapidly changing geopolitical, budgetary and cultural landscapes.”

President Obama said last week that he plans to reappoint Dempsey for another two-year term. That makes it worthwhile to take another look at this career Army officer who likes to quote Yeats, is a straight talker on tough issues – including to Congress – and enjoys singing in public, as he did Memorial Day weekend with a silly song about unicorns for hundreds of children whose fathers or mothers had died in combat.

A 1974 West Point graduate and an armored cavalry officer who commanded forces in Iraq and Afghanistan, Dempsey has a master's degree in English from Duke University. He taught English at West Point, fought in Operation Desert Storm, was a special assistant to Joint Chiefs Chairman Gen. Hugh Shelton, and for two years trained and advised the Saudi Arabian national guard. He did the same recently for Iraq's army and other security forces.

Four appearances during the past five weeks give some insights into Dempsey's character.

Continue reading “Marcus Aurelius: Walter Pincus on General Martin Dempsey”

2013/07/012013/07/01

Berto Jongman: YouTube (46:03) Geoengineering with Toxic Metal Particles that Create Drought and Deluge — Media Meterologists Under Sanction, Not Allowed to Discuss — Killing Life Across All Forms

Corruption, Earth Intelligence, Government, Idiocy, Media, Military, YouTube

Fully documented, quite troubling.

Published on Jun 20, 2013

http://GeoEngineeringWatch.org

In this video, Dane Wigington gives a presentation in Northern California on the harmful effects of Geoengineering, declaring that there is no more critical topic today. The very essentials needed to sustain life on earth are being recklessly destroyed by these programs. This is not a topic that will begin to affect us in several years, but is now already causing massive animal and plant die off around the world, as well as human illness.

Long discussion accompanying tape below the line.

Continue reading “Berto Jongman: YouTube (46:03) Geoengineering with Toxic Metal Particles that Create Drought and Deluge — Media Meterologists Under Sanction, Not Allowed to Discuss — Killing Life Across All Forms”

2013/06/30

Robin Good: Curation with Noowit

Civil Society, Crowd-Sourcing, Innovation, Media

Noowit is a new curation and publishing platform that allows you to do on the web something very similar to what Flipboard allows you to do with your smartphone or tablet. You can curate a beautiful-looking web magazine, by selecting content from its internal news discovery engine or by clipping any content you find on the web with the dedicated NOOWIT bookmarklet.

On the backend you can select individual topics, authors and specific sources you want to subscribe to, to keep yourself informed. You can provide specific RSS feeds or import your collection of RSS subscriptions. You can create multiple content sections inside a magazine and when you add new content you can easily decide in which section it is going to end up. A swift navigation scheme provides almost seamless integration between the excerpted content that appears in the magazine and the full, original resource that you can navigate to without losing touch with the rest of the magazine. NOOWIT magazines can be set to be public or private and they can be viewed across devices and screen of all sizes. Like on Flipboard it is now possible to edit, modify or add to content that you pick and select to be added to your magazines.

My comment: NOOWIT easily creates great-looking digital magazines of your selected articles and resources. It is a great tool for anyone wanting to create easily a “splashy” curated digital magazine that looks great across devices with the minimum effort possible.

Private beta: http://www.noowit.com/

Preview: http://www.noowit.com/pbeta

Example I created: http://www.noowit.com/RobinGood

2013/06/302013/06/30

Chuck Spinney: Syria as a Case Study in the Failure of Democracy, Economics, Foreign Policy, Governance, and Intelligence

Corruption, Government, Media, Peace Intelligence

Attached is another excellent report by Patrick Cockburn on the disorientating nature of contemporary yellow journalism in the Syrian Civil War.

Of course, disorientation is not a new problem in war: Sun Tzu said, “All war is based on deception.”

But the ability to manipulate data and images with high-tech computing technology and then distribute that manufactured ‘reality' nearly instantaneously, and at very low cost, has increased and decentralized the power to deceive. This decentralization of the power to disorient has made everyone from Barack Obama to John Q. Average American more vulnerable to the self deception of an incestuously amplifying OODA loop*, and in so doing, it has spread confusion, disorder … and culpability throughout the political decision-making system.

This ambiguity goes beyond centrally orchestrated propaganda and raises what may the central question of contemporary governance in a system based on the assumptions of a representative democracy : Who are the real decision makers in an evolving decision making system (or OODA loop) that is pulled and twisted by a plethora of ephemeral shadows in a cave?

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* Readers unfamiliar with the nature of incestuous amplification in OODA loops will find a brief explanation in my essay Iraq Invasion Anniversery: Inside the Decider's Head.

Chuck Spinney

Port de Plaisance,Taverna, Corsica

Foreign media portrayals of the conflict in Syria are dangerously inaccurate

World View: It is naive not to accept that both sides are capable of manipulating the facts to serve their own interests

Patrick Cockburn

Independent, 30 June 2013

Every time I come to Syria I am struck by how different the situation is on the ground from the way it is pictured in the outside world. The foreign media reporting of the Syrian conflict is surely as inaccurate and misleading as anything we have seen since the start of the First World War. I can't think of any other war or crisis I have covered in which propagandistic, biased or second-hand sources have been so readily accepted by journalists as providers of objective facts.

Continue reading “Chuck Spinney: Syria as a Case Study in the Failure of Democracy, Economics, Foreign Policy, Governance, and Intelligence”

2013/06/302013/06/30

Rickard Falkvinge: When Journalism Dies, Tyranny Thrives

Corruption, Ethics, Law Enforcement, Media

With Journalism Persecuted, The United States Is Now At Event Horizon To A Police State

Repression: Glenn Greenwald, the Guardian reporter who published Edward Snowden’s leaks, was recently suggested to be a criminal for shining light on the NSA’s abuse of power. This is a key identifiable step when societies close down; it is a point of no return. It seems the United States is reaching the event horizon to a police state.

Read full post.

2013/06/29

Mini-Me: US reportedly bugged EU offices, computer networks, according to Der Spiegel magazine

#OSE Open Source Everything, Corruption, Government, Military

Huh?

US reportedly bugged EU offices, computer networks, according to Der Spiegel magazine

The United States has been accused of bugging European Union offices and accessing EU computer networks, according to secret documents cited in German magazine Der Spiegel.

EXTRACT:

The president of the European Parliament, Martin Schulz, says if the report is correct it will have a “severe impact” on relations between the EU and the United States.

“On behalf of the European Parliament, I demand full clarification and require further information speedily from the US authorities with regard to these allegations,” he said in a statement.

Luxembourg foreign minister Jean Asselborn told Der Spiegel, “if these reports are true, it's disgusting”.

“The United States would be better off monitoring its secret services rather than its allies,” he said.

Read full article.

Continue reading “Mini-Me: US reportedly bugged EU offices, computer networks, according to Der Spiegel magazine”

2013/06/282013/06/28