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)
Chuck Spinney Sounds Off

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]

Article About Grogon Stare

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
Who, Me?

Imperial by Design

The National Interest

From the issue

John J. Mearsheimer

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.

Read the article….

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.

Journal: Detriot in Ruins–End of Empire From 1960’s…

03 Economy, 04 Education, 05 Energy, 09 Justice, 11 Society, Budgets & Funding, Commercial Intelligence, Communities of Practice, Corporations, Corruption, Cultural Intelligence, info-graphics/data-visualization, IO Sense-Making, Money, Banks & Concentrated Wealth, Power Behind-the-Scenes/Special Interests, Waste (materials, food, etc)
Who, Me?

Detroit in ruins: the photographs of Yves Marchand and Romain Meffre

Guardian, Sunday 2 January 2011

Sean O'Hagan

Article

Photo Gallery Direct

In downtown Detroit, the streets are lined with abandoned hotels and swimming pools, ruined movie houses and schools, all evidence of the motor city's painful decline. The photographs of Yves Marchand and Romain Meffre capture what remains of a once-great city – and hint at the wider story of post-industrial America

. . . . . . .

Click to Enlarge

Cumulatively, the photographs are a powerful and disturbing testament to the glory and the destructive cost of American capitalism: the centre of a once-thriving metropolis in the most powerful nation on earth has become a ghost town of decaying buildings and streets. There is a formal beauty here too, though, reminiscent of Robert Polidori's images of post-hurricane Katrina New Orleans. “It seems like Detroit has just been left to die,” says Marchand, “Many times we would enter huge art deco buildings with once-beautiful chandeliers, ornate columns and extraordinary frescoes, and everything was crumbling and covered in dust, and the sense that you had entered a lost world was almost overwhelming. In a very real way, Detroit is a lost world – or at least a lost city where the magnificence of its past is everywhere evident.”

. . . . . . .

Click to Enlarge

The Ruins of Detroit tells the city's story so far in one starkly beautiful photograph after another, all of which add up to nothing less than an end-of-empire narrative. Or as Sugrue puts it: “The abandoned factories, the eerily vacant schools, the rotting houses, and gutted skyscrapers that Yves Marchand and Romain Meffre chronicle are the artefacts of Detroit's astonishing rise as a global capital of capitalism and its even more extraordinary descent into ruin, a place where the boundaries between the American dream and the American nightmare, between prosperity and poverty, between the permanent and the ephemeral are powerfully and painfully visible. No place epitomises the creative and destructive forces of modernity more than Detroit, past and present.”

Journal: In Money-Changers We Trust

03 Economy, 07 Other Atrocities, Budgets & Funding, Commerce, Corruption, Cultural Intelligence, Government, Money, Banks & Concentrated Wealth, Power Behind-the-Scenes/Special Interests, Secrecy & Politics of Secrecy

Chuck Spinney Recommends...

In Money-Changers We Trust

TruthDig Posted on Dec 28, 2010

By Robert Scheer

Two years into the Obama presidency and the economic data is still looking grim. Don’t be fooled by the gyrations of the stock market, where optimism is mostly a reflection of the ability of financial corporations—thanks to massive government largesse—to survive the mess they created. The basics are dismal: Unemployment is unacceptably high, the December consumer confidence index is down and housing prices have fallen for four months in a row. The number of Americans living in poverty has never been higher, and a majority in a Washington Post poll said they were worried about making their next mortgage or rent payment.

In a parallel universe lives Peter Orszag, President Barack Obama’s former budget director and key adviser, who even faster than his mentor, Robert Rubin, has passed through that revolving platinum door linking the White House with Wall Street. The goal is to use your government position to advance the interests of your future employer, and Orszag and Rubin’s actions in the government and then at Citigroup provide stunning examples of the synergy between big government and high finance.

Read more….

See Also:

Reference: 2011 Brave New Dystopia

Search: US fraud tri-fecta

Reference: 2011 Brave New Dystopia

04 Education, 06 Family, 07 Other Atrocities, 11 Society, Civil Society, Collective Intelligence, Corporations, Money, Banks & Concentrated Wealth, Officers Call, Power Behind-the-Scenes/Special Interests, Secrecy & Politics of Secrecy
Chuck Spinney Recommends...

2011: A Brave New Dystopia

truthdig, Posted on Dec 27, 2010

By Chris Hedges

The two greatest visions of a future dystopia were George Orwell’s “1984” and Aldous Huxley’s “Brave New World.” The debate, between those who watched our descent towards corporate totalitarianism, was who was right. Would we be, as Orwell wrote, dominated by a repressive surveillance and security state that used crude and violent forms of control? Or would we be, as Huxley envisioned, entranced by entertainment and spectacle, captivated by technology and seduced by profligate consumption to embrace our own oppression? It turns out Orwell and Huxley were both right. Huxley saw the first stage of our enslavement. Orwell saw the second.

We have been gradually disempowered by a corporate state that, as Huxley foresaw, seduced and manipulated us through sensual gratification, cheap mass-produced goods, boundless credit, political theater and amusement. While we were entertained, the regulations that once kept predatory corporate power in check were dismantled, the laws that once protected us were rewritten and we were impoverished. Now that credit is drying up, good jobs for the working class are gone forever and mass-produced goods are unaffordable, we find ourselves transported from “Brave New World” to “1984.” The state, crippled by massive deficits, endless war and corporate malfeasance, is sliding toward bankruptcy. It is time for Big Brother to take over from Huxley’s feelies, the orgy-porgy and the centrifugal bumble-puppy. We are moving from a society where we are skillfully manipulated by lies and illusions to one where we are overtly controlled.

Orwell warned of a world where books were banned. Huxley warned of a world where no one wanted to read books. Orwell warned of a state of permanent war and fear. Huxley warned of a culture diverted by mindless pleasure. Orwell warned of a state where every conversation and thought was monitored and dissent was brutally punished. Huxley warned of a state where a population, preoccupied by trivia and gossip, no longer cared about truth or information. Orwell saw us frightened into submission. Huxley saw us seduced into submission. But Huxley, we are discovering, was merely the prelude to Orwell. Huxley understood the process by which we would be complicit in our own enslavement. Orwell understood the enslavement. Now that the corporate coup is over, we stand naked and defenseless. We are beginning to understand, as Karl Marx knew, that unfettered and unregulated capitalism is a brutal and revolutionary force that exploits human beings and the natural world until exhaustion or collapse.

Read full article (also below the line as a safety copy)…

Continue reading “Reference: 2011 Brave New Dystopia”

Journal: Get America Working–A Conversation

Analysis, Budgets & Funding, Collaboration Zones, Collective Intelligence, Communities of Practice, Corporations, Ethics, InfoOps (IO), Intelligence (government), International Aid, IO Sense-Making, Key Players, Methods & Process, Money, Banks & Concentrated Wealth, Officers Call, Open Government, Policies, Policy, Power Behind-the-Scenes/Special Interests, Real Time, Strategy, Threats
Open Everything

PART I: The Only Way to Fix the Deficit–Multiply Jobs (William Drayton)

PART II: Nice Ideas But So Is Icing Cover Feces (Robert Steele)

PART III:  Create Jobs?  As an End In Themselves?  To Do What?  Why? (Alexander Carpenter)

PART IV:  Related Recommended Reading (Robert Steele)

The core take-away (from PART III)

Beyond its inherent merit and explicit substance, William Drayton: The Only Way to Fix the Deficit: Multiply Jobs is a great example of unconscious status-seeking righteousness – well-meaning ineptitude and irrelevance, trapped in the old paradigm of debt-money, growth, and social conditioning. This kind of thinking is exemplary of people who are focused on the superficial “economic crisis,” not going deeper to see that we have a political (and even a social) crisis with, of course, an economic manifestation. This represents the success of the pseudo-science of “economics,” originally created with the intention to get most people to believe that objective “natural” forces are running their lives, not other people, classes, and institutions (Thurmond Arnold, 1937). Good problem-solvers always begin with as much accurate information about the overall problem as possible. It's incompetent – or unconscious self-deception – to assume human nature isn't the core and essence of the problem, and Bill Drayton isn't necessarily incompetent…

Perspective (from PART III Reference):

“By providing the funding and the policy framework to many concerned and dedicated people working within the non-profit sector, the ruling class is able to co-opt leadership from grassroots communities, … and is able to make the funding, accounting, and evaluation components of the work so time consuming and onerous that social justice work is virtually impossible under these conditions” (Paul Kivel, You Call this Democracy, Who Benefits, Who Pays and Who Really Decides, 2004, p. 122 )

Phi Beta Iota: In Advanced Information Operations (IO) terms, we cannot fix the military until we fix government, we cannot fix government until we fix Wall Street and Main Street,  we cannot fix the economy until we fix the society, and all of that requires a firm focus on human nature and the relations among humans.  We live is a “whole system” and are mis-managing it by being ignorant and delusional about root causes and actual relationships.  Until we get the truth on the table, we cannot deal with it.  Good news:  all it takes is ONE node able to blend intelligence & integrity, that “spike” will proliferate.  The bottom line is that DEMAND creates jobs, and EDUCATION creates the demand for the RIGHT jobs.  Taking one example, the US Army, it could apply Advanced Information Operations to create a 180 degree maturation of the mind-set of its personnel, and use that to “eat the old” and create the new.  The US Army is going to suffer a nose dive in financial resources (as will the other services); the US Army is the ONLY service that must might be capable of “beating the dive” by re-inventing itself from inside out–starting with Advanced IO being about minds, not technology.  Similarly, a single multinational could “get a grip” and re-invent itself overnight–the example will proliferate.

Continue reading “Journal: Get America Working–A Conversation”

Journal: Dennis Kucinich Introduces Monetary Reform

03 Economy, 07 Other Atrocities, 11 Society, Budgets & Funding, Civil Society, Collective Intelligence, Commerce, Commercial Intelligence, Corporations, Counter-Oppression/Counter-Dictatorship Practices, Cultural Intelligence, Government, InfoOps (IO), Methods & Process, Money, Banks & Concentrated Wealth, Power Behind-the-Scenes/Special Interests, Strategy
Dennis Kucinich

Dear Friends of the American Monetary Institute,

IMPORTANT MONETARY NEWS ALERT:   MAJOR, HISTORIC PROGRESS BEING MADE

On Friday December 17th Congressman Dennis Kucinich (D,Ohio, 10th District) took a crucial and heroic step to resolve our growing financial crisis and achieve a just and sustainable money system for our nation by introducing the National Emergency Employment Defense Act of 2010, abbreviated NEED. The bill number is  HR6550.

While the bill focuses on our unemployment crisis, the remedy proposed contains all the essential monetary measures being proposed by the American Monetary Institute in the American Monetary Act. These are what decades of research and centuries of experience have shown to be necessary to end the economic crisis in a just and sustainable way, and place the U.S. money system under our constitutional checks and balances. Yes it can be done!

We expect this bill will also be re-introduced next year in the 112th Congress. By putting it in now Congressman Kucinich accomplishes these important things:

* First, the seriousness of intent is underscored;

* Second, it gives our nation the opportunity to view, discuss and understand the necessary provisions, giving the chance to make improvements for re-introduction;

* Third it serves as a beacon to our beleaguered people, cutting through the error, vested interest and disinformation that has blocked monetary reform understanding and action in the past.

The American Monetary Institute has activated its blog to discuss and review any questions about this act. Just click on the blog link at our homepage.

To participate in this process, please sign up at the bottom of our home page at . Then, after reading the proposed legislation feel free to make comments or put questions on the blog, including thoughtful suggestions on how it might be improved.

You can read a copy of the legislation here.

Warm regards to all,
Stephen Zarlenga
AMI

See Also:

Dennis Kucinich on the Proposed Monetary Reform

New Economy Network

Dennis Kucinich, Vice President for the Commonwealth–and Some Details