Public Intelligence Blog – Page 3097 – The truth at any cost lowers all other costs — curated by former US spy Robert David Steele.

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Infotention Skills: From Information Overload to Knowledge Navigation

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

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)

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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

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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

2011/09/05

Graphic: Endless War

Capabilities-Force Structure, Corruption, History, Political, Threats

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Source

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

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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

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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.

Paul Fernhout: Encouragement for the Sick at Heart – Planning for US Collapse, Learning from Soviet Collapse

Blog Wisdom

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Always remember Howard Zinn's remarks:

“In this awful world where the efforts of caring people often pale in comparison to what is done by those who have power, how do I manage to stay involved and seemingly happy? I am totally confident not that the world will get better, but that we should not give up the game before all the cards have been played. The metaphor is deliberate; life is a gamble. Not to play is to foreclose any chance of winning. To play, to act, is to create at least a possibility of changing the world. There is a tendency to think that what we see in the present moment will continue. We forget how often we have been astonished by the sudden crumbling of institutions, by extraordinary changes in people's thoughts, by unexpected eruptions of rebellion against tyrannies, by the quick collapse of systems of power that seemed invincible. What leaps out from the history of the past hundred years is its utter unpredictability. This confounds us, because we are talking about exactly the period when human beings became so ingenious technologically that they could plan and predict the exact time of someone landing on the moon, or walk down the street talking to someone halfway around the earth.”

Also, check your vitamin D level from all your indoor work (humans are not adapted to life without lots of sunlight) and eat more veggies and omega 3s, and try other holistic stuff to maintain your balance in difficult times.

There is always a lot of corruption and confusion in any system under yin/yang tension. It is still worthwhile to focus on the green shoots that may someday grow into something better for a time.

You can ask yourself, what can be legally and honorably be put in place *now* to be ready for if/when the corruption and confusion in Washington collapses under its own weight? What world do you want to see emerge if that system collapses? What would you stand ready to offer to others as specific systems to use and specific social networks to expand if, as in Egypt, the US government falls from its own excesses and people turned to you and said, now what?

Continue reading “Paul Fernhout: Encouragement for the Sick at Heart – Planning for US Collapse, Learning from Soviet Collapse”