Journal ISSN 1078-1935 – Page 2068 – Public Intelligence Blog

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.

Continue reading “Hillary Clinton: Covering Up Benghazi”

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.

Continue reading “Stuart Umpleby: Deliberate Mis-Information is Anti-Cybernetic”

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.

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

2013/01/232013/01/23

Stuart Umpleby: Europeans Rocketing Past Americans in Cybernetics

Advanced Cyber/IO, IO Impotency

Americans are not inclined to create general theories. Europeans are.

2009 CONVERGERS AND DIVERGERS: A Dimension of Cultural Difference between the United States and Europe

In 1988 the US was the leader in cybernetics. Now we are tied for third with the Middle East, behind China and Europe.

2008 HOW RESEARCH IN CYBERNETICS IS MOVING FROM NORTH AMERICA TO EUROPE AND ASIA

However, the Chinese conception of “cybernetics” is technical, emphasizing subjects like OR. The European conception is at the state-of-the-art. Most Americans do not have any inkling about contemporary cybernetics while its popularity is growing in Europe as a standard business practice. Like the earlier quality process improvement innovations of W., Edwards Deminig, whose ideas had to be shown to be revolutionary in Japan at great economic cost to the USA, before the USA would consider (very late in the game), so also with cybernetics and improvements to the crafts of intelligence (decision-support and the eradication of misinformation or information pathologies) and sustainabile business (green to gold).

Phi Beta Iota: Cybernetics, put most simply, is about feedback loops and learning from tight transparent feedback loops. Lies, secrecy, and all forms of misinformation corrupt the feedback loops and radically increase the true cost to society of misadventures by the few.

See Also:

Stuart Umpleby at Phi Beta Iota

Wikipedia / Cybernetics

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.

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

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.

. . . . . . . . . .

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.

. . . . . . . . . .

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

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

2013/01/23

NIGHTWATCH: Weak Signal from Algeria – Anti-US Forces Up Their Game

04 Inter-State Conflict, 05 Civil War, 07 Other Atrocities, 08 Wild Cards, 09 Justice, 09 Terrorism, 10 Security, 11 Society, Civil Society, Government, Military

Algeria-US: Update. A senior Algerian official said that one of the terrorists captured at the In Amenas gas plant said under interrogation that some of the dead Egyptian terrorists also participated in the attack on the US Consulate in Benghazi last year. Three terrorists are in custody.

The official said the terrorists staged in southern Libya with arms purchased in Tripoli, Libya. He also said, “This is the result of the Arab Spring…. I hope the Americans are conscious of this.”

Comment: There is no way to corroborate the detainee's statement. What is worth noting is that the Algerian official's statements help explain why the Algerians might have had few qualms about assaulting the terrorists, despite the risk to foreigners. The Algerian government expects more attacks and the outcome will probably not be much different for foreigners.

The government has opposed US policy in the Arab world, especially the overthrow of the Qadhafi government. Some officials are making it very clear they hold American policy ultimately responsible for the gas plant attack in Algeria, the invasion of northern Mali by Islamist fighters and future attacks to come.

Americans working in Algeria are at increased risk from terrorists. Moreover, their safety does not appear to be a major factor in government planning for rescue operations.

Continue reading “NIGHTWATCH: Weak Signal from Algeria – Anti-US Forces Up Their Game”