Information Operations (IO) – Page 720 – Public Intelligence Blog

| Fri Mar. 25, 2011 3:00 AM PDT

EXTRACT: A lot has happened over the past 30 years, but if you're looking for a single political sea change that's had the biggest impact on middle class wages—more important than union decline, more important than NAFTA, more important than the end of Glass-Steagall—it's the political consensus that underlies the Fed's reluctance to allow labor markets to stay tight enough to generate wage increases in the real economy. And it's something we're seeing all over again right now, as the DC chattering classes have almost unanimously decided that inflation is our real enemy right now, even though core inflation is running around 1% and unemployment is still near 9%.

This is a policy beloved of the business community, which prefers loose labor markets that keep wages low and executive compensation high, but it hasn't always been the Fed's policy and it's not written in stone that it has to be now. Tight labor markets and rising middle-class wages are, to a large extent, a choice we make. Politics took them away 30 years ago, and politics can return them to us if we want.

Worth a full read….

Continue reading “Mother Jones: Who Screwed the Middle Class?”

2011/03/262011/03/26

AMERICA: Y UR PEEPS B SO DUM? Ignorance and courage in the age of Lady Gaga

07 Other Atrocities, Corruption, Counter-Oppression/Counter-Dictatorship Practices, Cultural Intelligence, IO Impotency, Misinformation & Propaganda, Reform

Subject: AMERICA: Y UR PEEPS B SO DUM?

AMERICA: Y UR PEEPS B SO DUM?

Ignorance and courage in the age of Lady Gaga
By Joe Bageant
Ajijic, Jalisco, Mexico

If you hang out much with thinking people, conversation eventually turns to the serious political and cultural questions of our times. Such as: How can the Americans remain so consistently brain-fucked? Much of the world, including plenty of Americans, asks that question as they watch U.S. culture go down like a thrashing mastodon giving itself up to some Pleistocene tar pit.

One explanation might be the effect of 40 years of deep fried industrial chicken pulp, and 44 ounce Big Gulp soft drinks. Another might be pop culture, which is not culture at all of course, but marketing. Or we could blame it on digital autism: Ever watch commuter monkeys on the subway poking at digital devices, stroking the touch screen for hours on end? Those wrinkled Neolithic brows above the squinting red eyes?

But a more reasonable explanation is that, (A) we don't even know we are doing it, and (B) we cling to institutions dedicated to making sure we never find out.

Safety Copy below the line. Original Counterpunch article still online dated December 10-12, 2010. This is circulating today as an email among the conscious counter-elite.

Continue reading “AMERICA: Y UR PEEPS B SO DUM? Ignorance and courage in the age of Lady Gaga”

2011/03/262011/03/26

Russia Returns Heavy-Hitter to Afghanistan

02 Diplomacy, 04 Inter-State Conflict, 05 Civil War, 06 Russia, 08 Wild Cards, Advanced Cyber/IO, Ethics, Government, InfoOps (IO), IO Multinational, IO Sense-Making, Peace Intelligence, Strategy

Highlights a classic failure of US intel and State…..no experts with the
depth or contacts necessary to conduct statecraft…….

Mullah Omar gets a Russian visitor

By M K Bhadrakumar

Asia Times, Mar 24, 2011

EXTRACT: The executive order makes the customary reference to the new appointee's worthy credentials as “an experienced diplomat and Orientalist”. And then, out of the blue, it adds that Kabulov “repeatedly held talks on the release of Russian pilots with the leadership of the Taliban in Kandahar, including [Taliban leader] Mohammed Omar”. There was no real need to have said that. It almost seems jarring to single out one mission in a distinguished diplomat's checkered career. But it said all that needed to be said.

By the language of the sport of cricket, one would shout from the crease in the heat of the moment: “Howzaat!” Is there an umpire nearby who could annotate the trajectory of Russian thinking? Not much ingenuity is needed to comprehend that Moscow is opening a line to the Taliban leadership and sending into the Hindu Kush someone who can meaningfully converse with the Quetta shura (council). Pakistanis know Kabulov, Iranians know him and Mullah Omar knows him. Afghan President Hamid Karzai knows him, too.

EXTRACT: Kabulov's mind is an open book – as far as a diplomat's mind can be. While serving in Kabul, he was an easily accessible ambassador and even American military commanders used to drop by to pick his brains. Kabulov's main complaint, though, was that the Americans were good listeners, but not good learners.

He kept harping on that the United States was repeating the same mistakes that the Soviet Union made in Afghanistan during its occupation in the 1980s, and to complicate matters, American policies have been innovating on Soviet mistakes by inventing original mistakes of their own for which as he once told John Burns of the New York Times, “We [Russia] do not own the copyright.”

Read full article….

Phi Beta Iota: The article is a reference work, worth keeping, worthy of war colleges and those who aspire to be great leaders.

2011/03/262011/03/26

NIGHTWATCH on Bin Laden Sightings–Saudi PSYOP?

07 Other Atrocities, 08 Wild Cards, 09 Terrorism, Analysis, Corruption, Cultural Intelligence, Government, InfoOps (IO), Intelligence (government), IO Multinational, IO Sense-Making, Misinformation & Propaganda

Troubling End Note: Asia Times Online on 24 March published an article by Syed Saleem Shahzad, who is an insightful commentator on South Asian affairs, as well as the publication's Pakistan Bureau Chief. He has studied al Qaida a long time. He wrote that US intelligence has actionable information that Osama bin Laden has been “criss-crossing” the Pakistan – Afghanistan border region in northwestern Pakistan during the past few weeks.

Phi Beta Iota: Bin Laden sets alarm bells ringing By Syed Saleem Shahzad

Shahzad wrote that US officials are “stunned” by bin Laden's visibility and the frequency of his movements. Bin Laden's purposes are not known. Terrorist analysts reportedly think the new level of activity means bin Laden is planning another large attack, though the 9/11 planning was actually not done by bin Laden. The South Asia analysts think he is meeting with friendly Afghan warlords to bring the Afghan War to a favorable conclusion for the Taliban.

What is disturbing is how little mainstream media attention this article has received. Readers are encouraged to read it.

NIGHTWATCH KGS Home

Continue reading “NIGHTWATCH on Bin Laden Sightings–Saudi PSYOP?”

2011/03/252011/03/25

Tom Atlee on the US Budget Crisis

03 Economy, 07 Other Atrocities, 09 Justice, 10 Security, 11 Society, Budgets & Funding, Commercial Intelligence, Communities of Practice, Corruption, Cultural Intelligence, Ethics, IO Multinational, Methods & Process, Money, Banks & Concentrated Wealth, Open Government, Power Behind-the-Scenes/Special Interests, Reform, Strategy

March 25, 2011

Info and Perspective on the Budget Crisis

Dear friends,

So much is happening under the guise of “the budget crisis” that I thought it might be useful to deconstruct this issue a bit.

Phi Beta Iota: Tom has produced a relatively long and meticulously documented essay

PART A: PRIMARY SOURCES OF THE BUDGET CRISIS

PART B: RATIONAL APPROACHES TO THE BUDGET CRISIS

PART C: IMPORTANT LINKS

Among us all, he is the most balanced and closest to the public soul.

Read entire essay….

2011/03/25

SCADA Vulnerabilities–Known Problem Since 1990

IO Impotency

SCADA Graphics — Click on Image to Enlarge

Attack Code for SCADA Vulnerabilities Released Online

By Kim Zetter

March 22, 2011 |

WIRED Magazine

Phi Beta Iota: Nice piece. Winn Schwartau has been warning on this since 1990, Robert Steele organized the letter to Marty Harris in 1994. So what have we got in 2011, just over twenty years later? Cyber-Command blowing $12 billion on cyber-offense while neglecting cyber-defense as well as the basics–the national non-military infrastructure upon which everything else depends. The irresponsibility of government is quite frightening.

2011/03/252011/03/25

Reddit Focus on Darknet, Mesh, Cyber-Freedom

Autonomous Internet

reddit best — DuckDuckGo Web Stack on Reddit

This reddit is dedicated to organizing and creating a decentralized VPN as the first stage of the darknet plan.

There have been some projects started up that may interest you.

Reddit I2P .. Beginning a Map .. Tor Project

Be sure to check these things out, and if you can code please consider making some tools that will help fight back against censorship of the internet.

DarkNet Plan List of Popular Entries….

Tip of the Hat to Eugen Leiti at Distributed Internet Google Group.