Communities of Practice – Page 899 – Public Intelligence Blog

2013/01/24

SchwartzReport: Catholic Leaders Morally Disengaged and Complicit in Sex Abuse Cover-Ups for Decades

06 Family, 07 Health, 09 Justice, 11 Society, Civil Society, Corruption

Another Catholic Sex Abuse Cover-up
MARY ELIZABETH WILLIAMS, Staff Writer – Salon

This story just never stops, and finally one is forced to conclude that the Roman Catholic Hierarchy (as distinct from the living community of believers) is simply degenerate and corrupt. So many thousands upon thousands of children have been molested worldwide by this organization's priesthood that I, for one, can no longer keep track of an accurate number, except that it is very large, and the damage very great. I don't understand! how a Catholic family can be comfortable leaving their child with a priest and, I guess, because Catholic families are leaving the church in droves, the families can't either.

. . . . . . . . .

What’s astonishing now, in light of a continuing deluge of new information, isn’t that the local Catholic Church administration would put protecting its own ahead of considering the nightmare it was perpetuating for the victims – that’s pretty much a given. It isn’t even the lack of reporting to authorities – after all, churches weren’t legally required to do so then as they are now. It’s the apparent total lack of empathy that had to exist to describe a relationship between a priest and a 12-year-old child in terms of ‘surrogate father but also sex partner.”

Read full article.

Phi Beta Iota: This is a triple information pathology. The Catholic Church is enabling, concealing, and perpetuating atrocities against children. The government at multiple levels is willfully refraining from law enforcement against the Church. And finally, the media is failing to do investigative journalism.

2013/01/232013/01/30

US Jewish Leaders Apologize for USS Liberty, Promise Not to Meddle in US Foreign Policy Anymore (UPDATED with New LBJ Cover Story That Exonerates Zionists?)

07 Other Atrocities, 10 Security, 11 Society, Civil Society, Cultural Intelligence, Government, Military, Offbeat Fun, Officers Call

UPDATED 30 Jan 2013: Mini-Me: LBJ Behind USS Liberty? Re-Evaluating What Can Be Known

Jewish Leaders Meet Obama, Apologize for USS Liberty

BNN Senior Producer Karl Reich, 23 January 2013

Washington (BNN) – Leaders of several major American Jewish organizations met today with President Barack Obama and his national security team, offering abject apologies for the Israeli covert attack on the USS Liberty that left 34 Killed in Action (KIA), and 171 Wounded in Action (WIA).

For over 30 years the US Government has been a co-conspirator with Israel and its Zionist supporters in the US, whose campaign contributions to US Senators and Representatives were always accompanied by a note, “Forget about the USS Liberty — it was just business.”

The participants refused to discuss the specifics of the meeting. The groups at the hour-long session included the Anti-Defamation League, the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), the Conference of Major American Jewish Organizations and the American Jewish Committee.

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2013/01/232013/01/23

Hillary Clinton: Covering Up Benghazi

Corruption, Government, Ineptitude

Phi Beta Iota: Our interpretation of today's live broadcast of testimony by Secretary of State Hillary Clinton:

01 She was not consulted about Ambassador Rice being the point person for publicly presenting the talking points butchered by the White House. She was allegedly in town and monitoring demonstrations in Egypt rather than the security situation in Libya. She may actually have been in Iran.

02 She dissembless on when and how Washington knew the Benghazi attack was a full scale attack rather than a protest.

03 She dissembles on the lack of military response, drawing on Admiral Mike Mullen's nonsense about no military assets being available. Everyone is covering up for Leon Panetta, including John McCain.

04 She dances very elegantly around the fact that Benghazi was a CIA base for which the Department of State was in no way responsible for security.

05 The precise circumstances of how a US Ambassador got into Benghaze and was left to die in a room with no ventilation have not been addressed.

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2013/01/232013/02/13

Stuart Umpleby: Deliberate Mis-Information is Anti-Cybernetic

Communities of Practice, Corruption, IO Impotency

Of possible interest consistent with the information pathologies threat, not my views but worthy of reflection.

Misinformation and Its Correction: Continued Influence and Successful Debiasing

A successful democracy requires well-informed citizens, but what if the information at their disposal is not accurate? Examples of misinformation are widespread and range from inflated advertising claims and political accusations to flawed scientific findings and assertions over health and medical issues. The scholar Cass Sunstein has written of the effects of “biased assimilation,” and how the echo-chamber of polarized groups is more susceptible to rumor- or conspiracy-based “information cascades.”

So how does misinformation start, how does it spread, and what can be done to counteract its effects? A 2012 metastudy from the University of Western Australia, University of Michigan, and University of Queensland published in Psychological Science in the Public Interest, “Misinformation and Its Correction: Continued Influence and Successful Debiasing,” focuses on how misinformation originates and spreads, why it is difficult to correct, and how best to counteract it.

Key study findings include:

Read seven findings and see other links.

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2013/01/232013/01/23

Winslow Wheeler: The China Pivot and Air-Sea Battle — Institutionalized Idiocy and the Moral-Intellectual Death of Andy Marshall

Corruption, Government, Military

The Asia Pivot–with “Air-Sea Battle” deeply embedded into it–has become the accepted wisdom in Washington for America's post-Afghanistan national security strategy. Is it affordable? Is it competent? Is it even a strategy?

It also presents a useful test for SecDef-designate Hagel's ability to separate the wheat from the chaff regarding defense issues. While Hagel has already shredded–to a large extent–his own reputation as someone willing to stand up to Pavlovian conventional wisdom, he will have another chance in his confirmation hearings next week to show he is not just another political hack.

National Security

Powering the Pacific “Pivot” With Leon and Chuck

By Winslow WheelerJan. 23, 2013

It's old, and likely thoroughly forgotten now, but last summer the Washington Post ran an excellent article on the U.S. military‘s “pivot” toward Asia, its origins, and its budget implications. It presented some meaningful background on where the pivot came from, and how it so quickly became dogma in Washington as the decade-long ground wars receded in the national rear-view mirror.

Beyond that, Greg Jaffe's article last August offers a good explanation for Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta‘s hysteria about defense budget cuts, and a useful criterion to assess Panetta's nominated replacement, former Senator Chuck Hagel.

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2013/01/232013/01/23

Marcus Aurelius: Brookings 2013 Briefing Books for the President — Leans Left, Lacks Substance

02 Diplomacy, 03 Economy, 10 Security, 11 Society, Government, Ineptitude, IO Impotency, Military, Non-Governmental

There is no “out of the box” thinking here, just dabbling on the margins.

Phi Beta Iota: We agree with Brother Marcus. This was a very disappointing document and not at all presidential in utility. There is no executive summary, no bullet points, no explicatory graphics, and no budgetary perspective (means to ways to ends). The individual memorandums are too long, too bland, and not imaginative in the least. Especially disappointing were the two pieces directly oriented on defense, the first by Peter Singer on drones, the second by Michael O'Hanlon on achieving defense budget efficiencies on the margins. The individual authors are first rate across the board, but the editorial function and the leadership function are both absent from this work. Singer plays it safe and calls for the establishment of protocols on drone use, avoiding the moral disengagement and extrajudicial assassination concepts that make the CIA drone program a crime against humanity; O Hanlon simply loses his excellent mind completely, and babbles about changes on the margin. Below the line is the complete Table of Contents for the Brookings document, and relevant alternative perspectives by Robert Steele.

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2013/01/23

SchwartzReport: Seven Sins of GMO Lobby — Toxicity & Infertility — True Cost of Commercialization and Corruption of Basic Science

01 Agriculture, 03 Economy, 06 Family, 07 Health, 11 Society, Commerce, Corruption, Government, Idiocy, IO Deeds of War

Here is a very sound paper on the activities of the pro-GMO lobby, and their assault on the integrity of science.

The pro-GM lobby's seven sins against science

Peter Melchett

Soil Association, 17 December 2012

The role that genetically modified (GM) food should play in our food chain is a highly contested political issues. One interesting facet of the debate in the past year has been the pro-GM lobby's interest in staking the ‘scientific high-ground'; simultaneously positioning itself as the voice of reason and progress, while painting its opponents as unsophisticated ‘anti-science' luddites, whose arguments are full of dogma and emotion, but lack scientific rigour. In this essay Peter Melchett explores how such crude characterisations are themselves based on logic that is itself profoundly damaging to the concept and representation of ‘science' in our national culture.

Powerful forces in Western society have been promoting genetic engineering (now usually genetic modification – GM) in agricultural crops since the mid-1990s. They have included many governments, in particular those of the USA and UK, powerful individual politicians like George Bush and Tony Blair, scientific bodies like the UK's Royal Society, research councils, successive UK Government chief scientists, many individual scientists, and companies selling GM products. They have ignored the views of citizens, and most sales of GM food have relied on secrecy – denying consumers information on what they are buying (20 US States are currently embroiled in fierce battles over GM labelling, strenuously opposed by Monsanto). Worse, they have consistently promoted GM in ways which are not only unscientific, but which have been positively damaging to the integrity of science.

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Indeed, the basic science concerning the complexities of gene organisation and function suggests that natural breeding, often augmented with the non-GM biotechnology tool of MAS, is a far more powerful and productive way forward for crop improvement. Natural breeding and MAS not only preserve gene order and function, but allow the multiple gene systems that confer desirable properties such as higher yield,1 2 3 4 5 pest-6 7 8 9 10 and blight-resistance,11 12 13 and tolerance to drought,4 14 15 16 17 salinity,4 18 and flood,4 19 20 21 to be rapidly and relatively inexpensively22 bred into crops – something which is still only a distant dream for GM crop technologists.

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Seven Sins (List Only Below, or Read Full Article)

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