Public Intelligence Blog – Page 2301 – The truth at any cost lowers all other costs — curated by former US spy Robert David Steele.

0Shares

Huh?

‘We should have talked to Taliban' says top British officer in Afghanistan

Exclusive: General Nick Carter says west could have struck a deal with Taliban leaders after they were toppled a decade ago

Emma Graham-Harrison in Kabul

The Guardian, Friday 28 June 2013

The west should have tried talking to the Taliban a decade ago, after they had just been toppled from power, the top British commander in Afghanistan has told the Guardian, barely a week after the latest attempt to bring the insurgent group to the negotiating table stuttered to a halt.

General Nick Carter, deputy commander of the Nato-led coalition, said Afghan forces would need western military and financial support for several years after western combat troops head home in 2014. And he said the Kabul government may have to accept that for some years it would have only shaky control over some remoter parts of the country.

Speaking exclusively to the Guardian, he said: “Back in 2002, the Taliban were on the run. I think that at that stage, if we had been very prescient, we might have spotted that a final political solution to what started in 2001, from our perspective, would have involved getting all Afghans to sit at the table and talk about their future,”

Acknowledging that it was “easy to be wise with the benefit of hindsight”, Carter added: “The problems that we have been encountering over the period since then are essentially political problems, and political problems are only ever solved by people talking to each other.”

Read full article.

Continue reading “Mini-Me: UK General “We Should Have Talked to Taliban” Decade Ago”

2013/06/282013/06/28

Berto Jongman: Dutch Move to Transform Education Using iPads

04 Education, Culture, Design, Education

0Shares

Radical Reform: Dutch iPad Schools Seek to Transform Education

By Marco Evers

Plenty of schools use iPads. But what if the entire education experience were offered via tablet computer? That is what several new schools in the Netherlands plan to do. There will be no blackboards or schedules. Is this the end of the classroom?

Think different. It was more than an advertising slogan. It was a manifesto, and with it, former Apple CEO Steve Jobs upended the computer industry, the music industry and the world of mobile phones. The digital visionary's next plan was to bring radical change to schools and textbook publishers, but he died of cancer before he could do it.

Some of the ideas that may have occurred to Jobs are now on display in the Netherlands. Eleven “Steve Jobs schools” will open in August, with Amsterdam among the cities that will be hosting such a facility. Some 1,000 children aged four to 12 will attend the schools, without notebooks, books or backpacks. Each of them, however, will have his or her own iPad.

There will be no blackboards, chalk or classrooms, homeroom teachers, formal classes, lesson plans, seating charts, pens, teachers teaching from the front of the room, schedules, parent-teacher meetings, grades, recess bells, fixed school days and school vacations. If a child would rather play on his or her iPad instead of learning, it'll be okay. And the children will choose what they wish to learn based on what they happen to be curious about.

Preparations are already underway in Breda, a town near Rotterdam where one of the schools is to be located. Gertjan Kleinpaste, the 53-year-old principal of the facility, is aware that his iPad school on Schorsmolenstraat could soon become a destination for envious — but also outraged — reformist educators from all over the world.

And there is still plenty of work to do on the pleasant, light-filled building, a former daycare center. The yard is littered with knee-deep piles of leaves. Walls urgently need a fresh coat of paint. Even the lease hasn't been completely settled yet. But everything will be finished by Aug. 13, Kleinpaste says optimistically, although he looks as though the stress is getting to him.

‘Pretty Normal in 2020'

Last year, he was still the principal of a school that had precisely three computers, which he found frustrating. “It was no longer in keeping with the times,” he says. Soon, however, Kleinpaste will be a member of the digital avant-garde. He is convinced that “what we are doing will seem pretty normal in 2020.”

Read full article.

Continue reading “Berto Jongman: Dutch Move to Transform Education Using iPads”

2013/06/282013/06/28

Berto Jongman & Jon Rappoport: Is NSA a Criminal Blackmail Enterprise?

07 Other Atrocities, 10 Transnational Crime, Corruption, Government, Military

0Shares

The Criminal N.S.A.

By JENNIFER STISA GRANICK and CHRISTOPHER JON SPRIGMAN

The New York Times, June 27, 2013

Read full article.

Is NSA Blackmail Inc. for the military industrial complex?

Jon Rappoport, 28 June 2013

Read full post including citations from Russ Tice, 20 year veteran.

2013/06/282013/06/28

Jean Lievens: The Do It Yourself Maker Movement

Hardware, Manufacturing, Materials, Resilience, Software, Transparency

0Shares

“In this chapter, we investigate the maker subculture and its manifestation in fabbing ecosystem. In other words, how the love of making things, hacking, tinkering, circuit bending and doing/making everything so-called DIY is a significant peculiarity of Fab Labs. We first look at the meaning and the emergence of the maker subculture and the development of hackerspaces and shared machines shops. Secondly, we explore how the maker community is shaped and organized. In a third point, this chapter details a Fab approach of architecture, art and fashion. Finally, we see how hobbyists moved from do-it-yourself (DIY) to do-it-together (DIT) activities with examples of making music instruments and biotech.”

Complete P2P Foundation Page below the line. Links added.

Continue reading “Jean Lievens: The Do It Yourself Maker Movement”

2013/06/282013/06/28

Neal Rauhauser: A Cognitive Prosthetic

Cultural Intelligence

0Shares

A Cognitive Prosthetic

I recently wrote Curation & Cognition after receiving a paper that defined the practice of curation: Attention Doesn’t Scale. Summary: good curation is a treasure when you find it, and now we know what that entails.

Stemming A Torrent Of Garbage describes the poor condition of LinkedIn groups without naming names. The ones I admit to being in are fine, a lot of the others … not fine. Summary: There is a problem, and good curation can play a role in resolving it.

An acquaintance recently forwarded me a story about a young man who was using his cell phone as a ‘cognitive prosthetic’. He had some sort of dangerous sleep disorder and the phone served as means for him to self assess so he’d know when trouble was brewing. This set me to thinking about what sort of cognitive prosthetic I could arrange for myself in order to improve my focus. I had long been thinking I needed to do a time study on how long it took me to get through the policy oriented email I receive, I decided I’d look for a browser plugin that could assist in this, and I got something that will serve as a starting point with my very first search: Time Tracker.

Continue reading “Neal Rauhauser: A Cognitive Prosthetic”

2013/06/282013/06/28

Mike Lofgren: The Sleep of Reason Breeds Monsters – the Failure of American Public Institutions Enabled by the Collapse of American Public Intelligence

Communities of Practice, Corruption, Idiocy, Ineptitude

0Shares

The Authoritarian Seduction

“The sleep of reason breeds monsters.”
-Francisco Goya

The Gallup organization has released yet another dog-bites-man opinion poll which found that Americans' confidence in Congress has fallen to a record low of 10 percent. This result is a continuation of a decades-long trend of declining approval ratings for Congress, and is justifiable based on that institution's shabby behavior. Wall Street's seizure of our national legislature in the 1990s and the consolidation of its control during the 2000s was at bottom a conspiracy of both parties to surrender popular self-government to the forces of plutocracy. Congress has reduced itself to diversionary behavior and the news media dutifully play along: abortion bills, Benghazi scandals, and similar emotional fodder crafted to stir up the animal juices get maximum press attention. Meanwhile, a bill that would effectively deregulate American financial institutions' overseas derivatives trades – remember the London Whale? – passed the House of Representatives by a 301-124 margin amid a near-blackout by the media.

While Congress's dismal approval rating was the lede in virtually all reporting on the Gallup poll, there are several other findings in that poll that establish a pattern. Labor unions? They are near the bottom, at 20 percent. The print and televised media? They clock in at 23 percent, deservedly so, for reasons explained in the paragraph above. Public Schools? They do better, but only relatively, at 32 percent.

What do those institutions have in common? They are all bodies necessary for enlightened self-government and the self-improvement of citizens. And they are all perceived to be failing in their roles, such that most poll respondents lack confidence in them. There is a good deal of justification in the public's view, but it cannot be healthy for a democracy if its instrument of representational government, its free press, its common provision of education, and the main organizational means by which working people improve their lives, are all held in such low regard.

Continue reading “Mike Lofgren: The Sleep of Reason Breeds Monsters – the Failure of American Public Institutions Enabled by the Collapse of American Public Intelligence”