Full Op-Ed Online

Phi Beta Iota: This is the section that got our attention:

The information revolution, he said, has not raised the level of public intelligence. It is no secret, he continued, “that the public knows less about public affairs than it used to know. Millions of Americans cannot begin to tell you what is in the Bill of Rights, what Congress does, what the Constitution says about the powers of the presidency, how the party system emerged or how it operates. A sizeable majority, according to a recent survey, believe that Israel is an Arab nation.”

Our Revolting Elites

by J. R. Nyquist

Weekly Column Published: 1.15.2010

In 1995 Christopher Lasch came out with The Revolt of the Elites and the Betrayal of Democracy. The introduction was titled “The Democratic Malaise” and included chapters like “Does Democracy Deserve to Survive?” and “The Lost Art of Argument.” The threat to our civilization, said Lasch, does not come from the masses. The threat comes from the elite.

. . . . . . .

According to Lasch, there are far worse problems facing America than racism: “the crisis of competence; the spread of apathy and a suffocating cynicism; the moral paralysis of those who value ‘openness' above all.” . . .

Continue reading “Worth a Look: “Our Revolting Elites” & Dumb Public”

2010/01/152010/01/15

Worth A Look: MobileIron C4I in the Cloud

Methods & Process, Technologies, Tools

Company Home Page

Network World Names MobileIron a Top 10 Start-up to Watch (Company Press Release)

MobileIron's Innovative Solution for Smartphone Management Drives Selection

Smartphone usage in the enterprise continues to grow rapidly. Forrester Research recently released data showing that 78 percent of information workers across the U.S., Canada, and the U.K. either already use or would like to use smartphones to do work. However, smartphones introduce security, cost, and usability challenges that traditional mobile device management strategies cannot address. MobileIron's patent-pending Virtual Smartphone Platform moves smartphone data to the enterprise cloud and gives IT and users unprecedented, real-time intelligence and control while saving 10-20 percent off wireless bills and delivering a compelling new mobile experience.

MP4_movie_glasses_11319 — Peace Jumper Peripheral

Phi Beta Iota: This leads to a press release, but we like it. We envision the Army Civil Affairs Brigade as the hub for a global network of Peace Jumpers, each armed with a SmartPhone that has reach-back capabilities to a Multinational Decision Support Center and a global grid of 24/7 on call interpreter-translators skilled in 183 languages and all sitting in front of an Internet terminal.

In combination with existing eyeglasses as well as embedded projection capabilities, we see no reason why we cannot enable Smart Multinational Multifunctional Operations within the year.

Haiti should be an information operation, not a physical cluster-dump or financial sink-hole….in our humble opinion.

2010/01/15

Journal: Reality Check on Afghanistan & Gaza

Cultural Intelligence, Peace Intelligence

If you think the US/NATO occupation of Afghanistan is protecting the Afghan people, and especially the rights of women, think again.

Chuck

Afghanistan’s soft-spoken rebel The voice from the back of the room

photo joya — Tiny but powerful: Malalai Joya speaks and the women listen

Malalai Joya is only 32, but she has been an exile, a refugee, a teacher of girls in the Taliban’s Afghanistan, and now that country’s youngest member of parliament. She’s still on the run though, and still threatened with assassination

“After 9/11, they occupied my country under the banner of women’s rights and human rights and democracy, but they bring into power this photocopy of the Taliban,” she told supporters in New York. “That’s why today, the situation in Afghanistan is a disaster.”

And on another front….

A second Gaza war around the corner?

Israel's recent aggressions look ominously like the 4 November 2008 attack on Gaza, which killed six persons and shattered the four-month-long truce meticulously respected by Hamas. Predictably, Hamas and other factions retaliated for that Israeli provocation and then Israel used their response to justify its massacre of 1,400 people in Gaza this time last year.

photo gaza deaths — Israel's recent assassinations of Palestinian resistance activists look ominously like the aggression that preceded last winter's attacks in Gaza. (Wissam Nassar/MaanImages)

2010/01/152010/01/15

Journal: MILNET Selected Headlines

04 Inter-State Conflict, 05 Civil War, 06 Genocide, 07 Other Atrocities, 08 Wild Cards, 10 Security, Cultural Intelligence, Military, Peace Intelligence

British Search And Rescue Team Turned Away From Port-Au-Prince

There were reports that the airport at Port-au-Prince had run out of aviation fuel, one of the factors that is understood to have led the US military to close it. . . . The scene at Santo Domingo airport was one of chaos, uncertainty and often despair for aid workers.

graphic africa collage — Ethno-Colonial BIG Africa

Phi Beta Iota: Lesson learned by the USMC the hard way (as of 1992): need Forward Area Refueling Points (FARP) in the FIRST lift.

U.S. Army Africa Boss: ‘I Feel Like The Lone Ranger…'

“Africa’s not high on America’s priority list these days.

Sometimes I feel like the Lone Ranger trying to get people to bring resources to bear out here.”

I had pointed out in an earlier interview that U.S. Army Africa and Africa Command in general are notably absent from the wars in Democratic Republic of Congo and Sudan, conflicts Garrett said are “currently the world’s two deadliest.”

For Israel, a Reckoning

A new global movement is challenging Israel's violations of international law with the same strategies that were used against apartheid

Phi Beta Iota: Israeli influence on the US Government has been as bad as post-war Nazi influence on the Cold War ubbas–both have spawned policies that have murdered and displaced millions, with attendant atrocities.

Pakistan: U.S.-Backed Broadcast Begins

Phi Beta Iota: Too little too late and they almost certainly have no idea about the history of the Pashtun Peace Army.

Taliban steps up violence in Afghanistan

Recent Pakistani military operations in insurgent strongholds in Pakistan also have driven greater numbers of Pakistan-based Taliban back into Afghanistan, the officer said.

UK plans ‘trust fund' to woo Taliban fighters

Phi Beta Iota: Turn in one weapon, get enough money for two…or go enlist and training and food along with a new weapon. Money corrupts and it is not a substitute for Whole of Government Stabilization & Reconstruction accomplishments.

How To Apply ‘Smart Power' In Yemen

Developing a coherent strategy focused on the right objectives is important, and hard to do. The country team in any normal American embassy (like the one in Sana) does not have the staff, resources or experience to do so. The limited American military presence in Yemen does not either. Despite years of talk about the need to develop this kind of capability in the State Department or elsewhere in Washington, it does not exist. It must be built now, and quickly.

Phi Beta Iota: Start with Tony Zinni's The Battle for Peace and implement Robert Steele's DoD OSINT-M4IS2 Strategy along with Whole of Government Intelligence (Decision-Support).

2010/01/14

Who’s Who in Peace Intelligence: Barbara Marx Hubbard

Alpha E-H, Peace Intelligence

Barbara Marx Hubbard was the second of two female candidates for Vice President of the United States of America, at the Democratic Convention of 1984 along with Gerraldine Ferraro. She was nominated from the floor because of her short presentation on the need to connect everything and have a Peace Room as sophisticated as what we imagine for war. Today (2010) she is one of the most respected pioneers for conscious evolution within diversity.

Interview with Barbara Marx Hubbard

Profile of Barbara Marx Hubbard

SYNCON: A STEP TOWARD SYNERGISTIC DEMOCRACY

Review: Conscious Evolution: Awakening Our Social Potential

Review DVD: Humanity Ascending Series Part 1: OUR STORY featuring Barbara Marx Hubbard

2010/01/142010/01/14

Journal: America’s Debt to–and Incapacitation of–Haiti

07 Other Atrocities, 08 Wild Cards, Cultural Intelligence, History, IO Sense-Making

How easily we forget the balance books of history. Below are two pieces, one from the colonial era written in 2006, the other from the recent “neo-colonia” era in which the author examines the specifics of the Clinton Administration's policies toward Haiti. Chuck

Full Story Online

America's Historic Debt to Haiti

By Robert Parry February 10, 2006

As Haiti intrudes again on the U.S. consciousness with a new round of troubled elections, Americans see a violent, backward, poverty-stricken country run by descendants of African slaves. There are feelings of condescension mixed with a touch of racism.

But what few Americans know is that they owe this Caribbean nation a profound historical debt. Indeed, perhaps no nation has done more for the United States than Haiti and been treated as badly in return.

If not for Haiti – which in the 1700s rivaled the American colonies as the most valuable European possession in the Western Hemisphere – the course of U.S. history would have been very different. It is possible that the United States might never have expanded much beyond the Appalachian Mountains.

Full Story Online

Before and After the Quake

The Incapacitation of Haiti

By ASHLEY SMITH January 14, 2010

Why were 60 percent of the buildings in Port-au-Prince shoddily constructed and unsafe in normal circumstances, according to the city's mayor? Why are there no building regulations in a city that sits on a fault line? Why has Port-au-Prince swelled from a small town of 50,000 in the 1950s to a population of 2 million desperately poor people today? Why was the state completely overwhelmed by the disaster?

To understand these facts, we have to look at a second fault line–U.S. imperial policy toward Haiti. The U.S. government, the UN, and other powers have aided the Haitian elite in subjecting the country to neoliberal economic plans that have impoverished the masses, deforested the land, wrecked the infrastructure and incapacitated the government.

The fault line of U.S. imperialism interacted with the geological one to turn the natural disaster into a social catastrophe.

Continue reading “Journal: America's Debt to–and Incapacitation of–Haiti”

2010/01/142010/01/14

Journal: Critique of Government Banking Policies

03 Economy, Civil Society, Commerce, Commercial Intelligence, Ethics, Government

President Obama has a rapidly vanishing opportunity to achieve historical greatness as a trust buster by breaking up the banks. Trust busting is an almost risk free path to lasting respect — Teddy Roosevelt's honored place in American history is more a result of his trust busting than his gross imperialism.

In the attached article, my good friend Marshall Auerback explains why Obama's faux populism attacks the symptom rather than the disease now infecting our financial system.

My guess is that Obama's “reform” policies — i.e., change we can believe in — will not even be smart politics in the long run, because at the end of the day, suckering the Tea Baggers (not to mention the so-called progressives) with phony populist appeals, while supporting cosmetic banking reforms, will alienate just about everyone except the oligarchical elites benefitting from his protectionist policies. In this sense, Mr. Obama is rapidly becoming just another Bill Clinton, a highly intelligent, self-made man of the people who squandered his opportunity for greatness on the altar of short-sighted service to the rich and powerful.

Chuck Spinney

Full Story Online

Attack the Disease, Not the Symptoms

Marshall Auerback Jan 13,2010

Obama still doesn’t get it on how to rein in Wall Street.

Conceptual confusion remains at the heart of President Obama’s economic policy.