Policies – Page 516 – Public Intelligence Blog

2011/09/052011/09/05

Seth Godin: Back to (the wrong) school — inspires a plan to retrain 44% of the US workforce in one year

03 Economy, 04 Education, 11 Society, Advanced Cyber/IO, Collaboration Zones, Collective Intelligence, Communities of Practice, Ethics, InfoOps (IO), IO Deeds of Peace, Methods & Process, Open Government, Policy, Politics of Science & Science of Politics, Serious Games, Standards, Strategy, Technologies, Threats

Back to (the wrong) school

A hundred and fifty years ago, adults were incensed about child labor. Low-wage kids were taking jobs away from hard-working adults.

Sure, there was some moral outrage at seven-year olds losing fingers and being abused at work, but the economic rationale was paramount. Factory owners insisted that losing child workers would be catastrophic to their industries and fought hard to keep the kids at work–they said they couldn't afford to hire adults. It wasn't until 1918 that nationwide compulsory education was in place.

Part of the rationale to sell this major transformation to industrialists was that educated kids would actually become more compliant and productive workers. Our current system of teaching kids to sit in straight rows and obey instructions isn't a coincidence–it was an investment in our economic future. The plan: trade short-term child labor wages for longer-term productivity by giving kids a head start in doing what they're told.

Large-scale education was never about teaching kids or creating scholars. It was invented to churn out adults who worked well within the system.

Of course, it worked. Several generations of productive, fully employed workers followed. But now?

Continue reading “Seth Godin: Back to (the wrong) school — inspires a plan to retrain 44% of the US workforce in one year”

2011/09/05

Howard Rheingold: Infotention Skills + Citizen Intel RECAP

03 Economy, 04 Education, 11 Society, Academia, Advanced Cyber/IO, Civil Society, Collective Intelligence, Cultural Intelligence, Hacking

Infotention Skills: From Information Overload to Knowledge Navigation

An immersive learning experience from the Institute for Social & Network Literacy

21st Century Information Fluency

Self-guided Assessment and Tutorial Packages

Phi Beta Iota: US education, like the rest of government-dominated programs, is totally broken. Apart from the 22% now unemployed, another 22% can expect to be unemployed when the security state collapses and secret intelligence, defense, and homeland security are cut back to a quarter of their current inflated and dysfunctional numbers. An intelligent president with integrity would not leave those people handing–needed is an emergency Public Education program that gives all of those people (44% of the working public) a one year sabattical with structured online and face to face re-training–a PAID year of education funded by the huge cost savings that an intelligent President with integrity can quickly achieve. Howard Rheingold is the gold standard in this arena. Every university across America should be gearing up to offer a massive community-focused 21st Century retraining program.

2011/09/052011/09/05

Chuck Spinney: Can USA Move Beyond 9/11 Pathology?

01 Poverty, 03 Economy, 04 Inter-State Conflict, 05 Civil War, 06 Genocide, 07 Other Atrocities, 08 Proliferation, 09 Terrorism, 10 Security, 10 Transnational Crime, Civil Society, Corruption, Cultural Intelligence, DoD, Government, IO Deeds of War, Media, Military, Money, Banks & Concentrated Wealth, Officers Call, Policy, Politics of Science & Science of Politics, Power Behind-the-Scenes/Special Interests, Strategy, Waste (materials, food, etc)

CS Note: Lightly reformatted by text unchanged and nothing added

Can the United States move beyond the narcissism of 9/11?

The unity brought about by the tragedy was intense but fleeting. The war on terror has been disastrous abroad and divisive at home

Gary Younge, guardian.co.uk, Sunday 4 September 2011 18.00

In the immediate aftermath of the September 11 attacks the then national security adviser, Condoleezza Rice, called in her senior staff and asked them to think seriously about “how [to] capitalise on these opportunities”.

The primary opportunity came from a public united in anger, grief and fear which the Bush administration sought to leverage to maximum political effect. “I think September 11 was one of those great earthquakes that clarify and sharpen,” Rice told the New Yorker six months afterwards. “Events are in much sharper relief.”

Ten years later the US response to the terror attacks have clarified three things:

the limits to what its enormous military power can achieve,
its relative geopolitical decline and
the intensity of its polarised political culture.

It proved itself

incapable of winning the wars it chose to fight and
incapable of paying for them and
incapable of coming to any consensus as to why.

The combination of domestic repression at home and military aggression abroad kept no one safe, and endangered the lives of many. The execution of Osama bin Laden provoked such joy in part because almost every other American response to 9/11 is regarded as a partial or total failure.

Read original online–safety copy below the line.

Continue reading “Chuck Spinney: Can USA Move Beyond 9/11 Pathology?”

2011/09/052011/09/05

Marcus Aurelius: US at Permanent “War” + War RECAP

03 Economy, 04 Inter-State Conflict, 05 Civil War, 07 Other Atrocities, 08 Wild Cards, 09 Justice, 10 Security, 11 Society, Civil Society, Commerce, Commercial Intelligence, Corruption, Cultural Intelligence, DoD, Government, IO Deeds of War, Media, Military, Officers Call

Marcus-Aurelius-150x150 — Marcus Aurelius

The new normal, era persistent conflict.

A decade after the 9/11 attacks, Americans live in an era of endless war

Gregg Jaffe

Washington Post, September 5, 2011, p. 1

Video: The attacks of September 11, 2001 forced Americans to reevaluate their views on the nation's security. A decade later, is the country stronger and better prepared to prevent a terror attack? (Aug. 31)

This is the American era of endless war.

To grasp its sweep, it helps to visit Fort Campbell, Ky., where the Army will soon open a $31 million complex for wounded troops and those whose bodies are breaking down after a decade of deployment.

Read full article.

See accompanying graphic.

Phi Beta Iota: This is not new. War has been the norm since President General David Eiserhower warned of the rise of the military-industrial complex. The article is worth reading in full to understand how very smart people can become very stupid–we are in a state of endless war because none of our leaders have the integrity to apply their undeniable intelligence to waging peace, which is vastly cheaper than war–the problem is that peace enriches poor people rather than concentrating wealth.

See Especially:

Review: Perpetual War for Perpetual Peace – How We Got to Be So Hated

2011/09/042011/09/04

Marcus Aurelius: US Special Forces Train Mexican Assassins

07 Other Atrocities, 08 Wild Cards, 09 Justice, 10 Security, 10 Transnational Crime, 11 Society, Corruption, DoD, IO Deeds of War, Military, Officers Call

U.S. Special Forces Training Mexican Assassination Squads to Battle Cartels

Public Intelligence.Net, 2 September 2011

A small but growing proxy war is underway in Mexico pitting US-assisted assassin teams composed of elite Mexican special operations soldiers against the leadership of an emerging cadre of independent drug organizations that are far more ruthless than the old-guard Mexican “cartels” that gave birth to them.

These Mexican assassin teams now in the field for at least half a year, sources tell Narco News, are supported by a sophisticated US intelligence network composed of CIA and civilian US military operatives as well as covert special-forces soldiers under Pentagon command — which are helping to identify targets for the Mexican hit teams.

Read full article….

Phi Beta Iota: Black SOF means well, but they are out of context and out of control. We recall with sadness that Cuban exiles trained and equipped by CIA to assassinate Castro used those skills and that equipment to assassinate John F. Kennedy, and more recently, many of the special forces trained in Mexico by US special forces have immediately rolled over to work for the cartels. The US Government lacks intelligence and integrity, and continues to throw money at bits and pieces of the old dysfunctional concepts….doing the wrong things righter instead of doing the right thing. Albert Einstein called that “insanity.” Mike Vickers has learned nothing from history, because he does not wish to learn–this is taxpayer funded playtime for him, and he is not being held accountable for the inevitable “blow back” that has accompanied every DoD/CIA assassination play going back fifty years.

2011/09/042011/09/04

Koko: Academic Ranking of World Universities 2011

04 Education

Koko Signs: Not a sign of any university that is actually holistic and committed to integrating knowledge. All are being evaluated on the basis of their many stovepipes of knowledge.

In the Maryland, District of Columbia-Virginia region, the following appear with their rank as shown.

18 Johns Hopkins University

38 University of Maryland, College Park

102-150 University of Virginia

151-200 George Mason University

151-200 University of Maryland, Baltimore

201-300 George Washington University

301-400 Georgetown University

Monday, August 15, 2011

Shanghai, People's Republic of China

The Center for World-Class Universities of Shanghai Jiao Tong University released today the 2011 Academic Ranking of World Universities (ARWU), marking its 9th consecutive year of measuring the performance of top universities worldwide.

Richard Wright: Mike Vicker’s Trillion Dollar Adventure

04 Inter-State Conflict, 07 Other Atrocities, 08 Wild Cards, 09 Terrorism, 10 Security, Corruption, Cultural Intelligence, DoD, Government, IO Deeds of War, Military

Soldier, Thinker, Hunter, Spy: Drawing a Bead on Al Qaeda

By ELISABETH BUMILLER

New York Times, September 3, 2011

EXTRACT:

“I just want to kill those guys,” Mr. Vickers likes to say in meetings at the Pentagon, with a grin.

. . . . . . .

As covert American wars — in Pakistan, Yemen and Somalia — continue in the second decade after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, so will the questions of legality, morality and risk that go along with them.

. . . . . . .

In Mr. Vickers’s assessment, there are perhaps four important Qaeda leaders left in Pakistan, and 10 to 20 leaders over all in Pakistan, Yemen and Somalia. Even if the United States kills them all in drone strikes, Mr. Vickers said, “You still have Al Qaeda, the idea.”

Read full article….

Phi Beta Iota: The insanity of it all is hard to fathom. Vickers is a male counterpart to Fran Townsend. The US Government, “in our name,” is spending over a trillion a year (that it borrows) for elective wars and global assassinations that are pissing off millions of people, while the “Undersecretary of Intelligence” spends all his time trying to kill the dirty dozen. All we can do at this point is recommend a close reading of Paul Fernhout: Open Letter to the Intelligence Advanced Programs Research Agency (IARPA).