Pakistan: An elite police commando from the provincial police force who was assigned as a bodyguard for the governor of Punjab Province murdered the governor today in Islamabad. The commando dropped his weapon and surrendered to the police, bragging that he was proud he killed a blasphemer. With that, Pakistan's political crisis deepened.
Journal: CIA Ghosts of Khost Ride Again….
04 Education, 04 Inter-State Conflict, 05 Civil War, 07 Other Atrocities, 08 Wild Cards, 10 Security, 11 Society, Corruption, Cultural Intelligence, Government, Intelligence (government), Methods & Process, Misinformation & Propaganda, Officers Call, Secrecy & Politics of Secrecy, Waste (materials, food, etc)![Marcus-Aurelius-150x150](http://phibetaiota.net/wp-content/uploads/2010/05/Marcus-Aurelius-150x150.jpg)
Using terminology sometimes used in the DoD special operations community, article below conveys a strong suggestion that in organizing and staffing its operation at Khost, CIA failed to discriminate between enthusiasm and capability. Based on knowing nothing more about the case than is available to the public, there seems to be a lot to agree with in this article, which seems to get better the farther into it you read.
2. A quotation long reputed to be associated with Marine Corps Drill Instructors is, “Let's be damned sure that no man's ghost will ever have cause to say, ‘if your training program had only done its job.'” The obvious supposition is that you actually put people through the training program. That may not have happened here.
By Jennifer Sklaka
Washingtonian.com, January 2011
Phi Beta Iota: Click on Silent Stars to read the entire piece, link posted for the record. Toward the end the article gracefully provides an indictment of CIA's incompetence across multiple fronts.
Journal: The Truth on Khost Kathy
Journal: Get America Working–A Conversation Part II
07 Other Atrocities, 11 Society, Civil Society, Collective Intelligence, Corporations, Cultural Intelligence, Methods & Process, Misinformation & Propaganda, Power Behind-the-Scenes/Special Interests, Secrecy & Politics of Secrecy, StrategyOriginal Post with William Drayton, Alexandere Carpenter, and Robert Steele: Journal: Get America Working–A Conversation
Part II–Alexander Carpenter (AC), the Founding Fathers, and Modern Seers
Journal: Get America Working-A Conversation
If you do nothing else, please consider reviewing the many contributions by Tom Atlee via the first line in Part IV: Related Recommended Reading,
AC: And add this from Charles Hugh Smith to the list:
Charles Hugh Smith America's Job-Creation Machinery Is Hollowed Out
Dave Cohen on Job Prospects in the Bubble Economy, looking for a technological driver:
And this for those still trying to believe in the “enlightenment model,” some lowest-common-denominator and somewhat overstated evolutionary psychology:
Ian Charles, Conscious Robots: How We Make a Decision
And add this about computer gaming:
How Videogames Are Changing the Economy
Continue reading “Journal: Get America Working–A Conversation Part II”
Reference: Gorgon Stare–USAF Goes Nuts (Again)
04 Inter-State Conflict, 05 Civil War, 08 Wild Cards, 10 Security, Advanced Cyber/IO, Analysis, Augmented Reality, Budgets & Funding, Geospatial, info-graphics/data-visualization, InfoOps (IO), Intelligence (government), Maps, Methods & Process, Military, Misinformation & Propaganda, Officers Call, Policy, Politics of Science & Science of Politics, Power Behind-the-Scenes/Special Interests, Reform, Secrecy & Politics of Secrecy, Standards, Strategy, Technologies, Waste (materials, food, etc)![editor spinney time](http://phibetaiota.net/wp-content/uploads/2010/05/editor-spinney-time.jpg)
SEE ALSO: Journal: Gorgon Stare (All Eyes, No Brain)
The American Way of War: If You Can See Everything, Can You Know Anything?
With Air Force's new drone, ‘we can see everything,' in today's Washington Post (attached below) is a good example of how the high-cost addiction to techno war is running amok. One thing ought to be clear in Afghanistan: A tiny adversary armed with the most primitive weapons, and a command and control system made up of prayer rugs and cell phones, has brought the high tech US military to a stalemate … or even worse, the looming specter a grand-strategic defeat, because we are becoming economically and morally exhausted by the futility of this war. It does not matter whether it is President Obama presiding over a vapid strategic review or a low ranking grunt on point in Afghanistan — the central problem facing the United States in Afghanistan is the absence of what the Germans call fingerspitzengefühlor the feeling in the fingerprints needed for an intuitive feel for or connection with one's environment.
As the American strategist Colonel John Boyd (USAF Ret.) showed, fingerspitzengefühl is absolutely essential to the kind of synthetic (as opposed to analytic) thinking that is necessary for quick, relevant, and ultimately successful decision making in war, where quick decisions and sharp actions at all levels must be made and harmonized in an ever-present atmosphere of menace, uncertainty, mistrust, fear, and chaos that impedes decisive action.[1]
![gorgon stare](http://phibetaiota.net/wp-content/uploads/2011/01/gorgon-stare-300x161.jpg)
To paraphrase Clausewitz, these difficulties multiply to produce a kind of friction, and therefore, even though everything in war is simple, the simplest thing is difficult. Clausewitz considered friction is the atmosphere of war. Nevertheless, according to the Post, the Air Force is about to deploy to Afghanistan a “revolutionary airborne surveillance system called Gorgon Stare, which will be able to transmit live video images of physical movement across an entire town.”
Quoting Maj. Gen. James O. Poss, the Air Force's assistant deputy chief of staff for intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance, “Gorgon Stare will be looking at a whole city, so there will be no way for the adversary to know what we're looking at, and we can see everything.” Nirvana. While the Post dutifully reports a smattering of opposing views, it misses the ramifications of the central idea epitomized by General Poss's confident assertion: namely, how the American ideology of techno war assumes it can negate the human need for fingerspitzengefühl on a battlefield.
General Poss's confidence suggests quite clearly he believes seeing everything enables one to know everything. This a stunning theory of knowledge. It is also a classic example of the American military's unquestioned belief that complex technologies coupled to step-by-step analytical procedures can negate the friction of combat to solve any problem in war. Lifting the fog of war is, in fact, a phrase frequently used in contractor brochures touting the efficacy of these technologies. This reflects theory of knowledge — really an unquestioned ideology — that views war as fundamentally a procedural problem of methodical analytical thinking, as opposed to its messy reality of being in large part an art of synthetic thinking.
Continue reading “Reference: Gorgon Stare–USAF Goes Nuts (Again)”
Journal: Imperial by Design, Unethical by Choice
02 Diplomacy, 10 Security, 11 Society, Corruption, Cultural Intelligence, Government, Methods & Process, Misinformation & Propaganda, Power Behind-the-Scenes/Special Interests, Secrecy & Politics of Secrecy, Strategy, Threats![linux penguin](http://phibetaiota.net/wp-content/uploads/2010/11/linux-penguin.jpg)
Imperial by Design
The National Interest
From the Jan-Feb 2011 issue
December 16, 2010
Summary: The author discusses the intellectual but not the ethical underpinings of the failure of US foreign policy and national security since the first Clinton Administration. He touches on alternative policies such as isolationalism, offshore balancing, selective engagement, global dominance, and then settles on offshore balancing as the way to go: pulling back the Army and Marines from overseas, sharply reducing their budgets, and restoring budget to the Air Force and the Navy.
John J. Mearsheimer is the R. Wendell Harrison Distinguished Service Professor of Political Science at the University of Chicago. He is on the Advisory Council of The National Interest, and his most recent book, Why Leaders Lie: The Truth About Lying in International Politics, was published in January 2011 by Oxford University Press. He is also the co-author of the deeply practical The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy and The Tragedy of Great Power Politics.
Reference: Truth & Nuance as an Information Operations (IO) Mission
Analysis, Articles & Chapters, Collaboration Zones, Communities of Practice, Corruption, Counter-Oppression/Counter-Dictatorship Practices, Ethics, InfoOps (IO), Intelligence (government), IO Sense-Making, Journalism/Free-Press/Censorship, Methods & Process, Misinformation & Propaganda, Money, Banks & Concentrated Wealth, Officers Call, Open Government, Policies, Power Behind-the-Scenes/Special Interests, Real Time, Secrecy & Politics of Secrecy, Strategy, Threats![face kelly vlahos](http://phibetaiota.net/wp-content/uploads/2010/12/face-kelly-vlahos1.jpg)
by Kelley B. Vlahos, December 14, 2010
EXTRACT: British novelist Aldous Huxley was a social critic and futurist, who is best known for penning Brave New World, which, aside from being a nearly 80-year-old science fiction masterpiece, is both an allegory and prophecy for 21st Century western society.
Huxley’s finger was on the pulse of human freedom, and he warned us over 50 years ago that it was fading fast. In 1958, he predicted that when concentrated in the hands of the “Power Elite,” rapidly evolving “mass communication” like television would be a critical tool of social and political conformity. Technology is only the medium, and it is “neither good nor bad,” Huxley wrote, but when in the wrong hands it can be “among the most powerful weapons in the dictator’s armory.” Propaganda, the suppression of the truth, particularly in democratic societies, Huxley argued, would bring upon an age of human enslavement, where instead of yokes and chains, people in celebrated “free” societies like America would be bound by the soft restraints of ignorance, incuriousness, distraction and irrationality.
. . . . . . .
EXTRACT: In his 1958 interview with Mike Wallace, Huxley explained his concept of velvet totalitarianism:
“’If you want to preserve your power indefinitely, you must get the consent of the ruled,’ he said. Those in power will do this primarily through ‘techniques of propaganda,’ by ‘bypassing the rational side of man and appealing to his subconscious and deeper emotions’ and ‘making him love his slavery.’”
I would submit that Mr. David Brooks loves his slavery, and furthermore, is the perfect “alpha caste” prototype from Brave New World – he uses the good brains God (Ford) gave him to reflexively sustain the status quo, barking and nipping like a loyal lapdog when something or someone threatens it. The same goes for the rest of the so-called journalistic elite who have taken to the Net and on the television to discredit Assange in recent days, either through bald ad hominem or discrediting his work as “not journalism,” or “criminal.” Proto-elite scrambling among the herd of pundits across the mediascape are the worst, feeling they have to be more red-faced and extravagant in their commentary in order to stand out.
. . . . . . .
EXTRACT: They aren’t even necessarily things we shouldn’t be reading or have some level of access to. Officials and journalists of every ilk spent the better part of this decade bemoaning the “over classification” of government information before, and especially after, 9/11. When pouring over the reams of information for the 9/11 Commission, former New Jersey Gov. Thomas Kean, who was chairing the commission said, “Three-quarters of what I read that was classified shouldn’t have been.”
Read this entire brilliant piece being categorized as a Historic Contribution.
Phi Beta Iota: Since starting this fight in 1988, the single most valuable body of knowledge we have acquired over those 22 years has been our little black book of great minds that speak the truth across all functional domains. Kelley Vlahos is married to Michael Vlahos, and they are two of the most nuanced thinkers we know. The era of secrecy and top-down micro-management for the benefit of the few is over. It will not be replaced by communism or anarchy, it will be replaced by moral communitarian capitalism and panarchy. It will focus–as we should have been focused since the end of World War II–on the needs and gifts of the five billion poor who can create infinite wealth, especially when we achieve infinite free energy by turning away from the corruption associated with the scarcity of fossil fuels, and instead tap into the free cosmic energy that Buckminster Fuller addressed so ably. INTEGRITY IS BACK IN VOGUE. That's a good thing.
Reference: Arianna Huffington–Wikileaks About Trust in Government–Or Not
07 Other Atrocities, Analysis, Communities of Practice, Corruption, Counter-Oppression/Counter-Dictatorship Practices, Cultural Intelligence, Ethics, Methods & Process, Misinformation & Propaganda, Officers Call, Policies, Power Behind-the-Scenes/Special Interests, Secrecy & Politics of SecrecyPosted: December 15, 2010 09:19 PM
The Media Gets It Wrong on WikiLeaks: It's About Broken Trust, Not Broken Condoms
EXTRACT: It's notable that the latest leaks came out the same week President Obama went to Afghanistan for his surprise visit to the troops — and made a speech about how we are “succeeding” and “making important progress” and bound to “prevail.”
The WikiLeaks cables present quite a different picture. What emerges is one reality (the real one) colliding with another (the official one). We see smart, good-faith diplomats and foreign service personnel trying to make the truth on the ground match up to the one the administration has proclaimed to the public. The cables show the widening disconnect. It's like a foreign policy Ponzi scheme — this one fueled not by the public's money, but the public's acquiescence.
The cables show that the administration has been cooking the books.
EXTRACT: For the Obama administration, it appears that accountability is a one-way street. When he had the chance to bring the principle of accountability to our wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, and investigate how we got into them, the president passed. As John Perry Barlow tweeted, “We have reached a point in our history where lies are protected speech and the truth is criminal.”
Any process of real accountability, would, of course, also include the key role the press played in bringing us the war in Iraq. Jay Rosen, one of the participants in the symposium, wrote a brilliant essay entitled “From Judith Miller to Julian Assange.” He writes:
For the portion of the American press that still looks to Watergate and the Pentagon Papers for inspiration, and that considers itself a check on state power, the hour of its greatest humiliation can, I think, be located with some precision: it happened on Sunday, September 8, 2002.
That was when the New York Times published Judith Miller and Michael Gordon's breathless, spoon-fed — and ultimately inaccurate — account of Iraqi attempts to buy aluminum tubes to produce fuel for a nuclear bomb.
Continue reading “Reference: Arianna Huffington–Wikileaks About Trust in Government–Or Not”