Tip of the Hat to Sumner Carter at Facebook.
Reference: General David Petraeus–An Examination
04 Inter-State Conflict, 05 Iran, 10 Security, 11 Society, Cultural Intelligence, Military, Misinformation & Propaganda, Officers Call, Power Behind-the-Scenes/Special Interests
David Petraeus — Hero Celebrity
By Michael Brenner (Senior Fellow, the Center for Transatlantic Relations) – Huffington Post – December 2, 2010
There is one celebrity with the makings of a national hero, someone who has the qualities that might carry him right into the White House. It is David Petraeus. He is almost universally credited with the brilliant achievement of saving American honor and gaining an approximation of ‘victory' in Iraq. President Obama himself is in awe of this warrior-intellectual to whom he defers on all matters in the Greater Middle East. Petraeus' mythic standing is a perfect example of how the compelling demand for a hero creates the illusion that indeed a savior has arrived.
Reference: Libraries as Change Agents
Briefings (Core)“Libraries and Broadband: Becoming Radical Change Agents in Our Communities”
December 2, 2010 16:05
Slides from a recent presentation by Professor R. David Lankes, Director of the Information Institute, Syracuse University's School of Information Studies, and director of the library science program for the school.
From the Abstract:
And so we come to the point. Why bring broadband libraries. We don’t do it as a means to bring facebook to the masses. We wire our buildings not as points of distraction or simply another service the library offers. Broadband is not a way to bring the world to the citizens of Vermont, but to unleash the passions and potentials of the citizens of Vermont on the rest of the world. Just as the roads of previous generations bound together empires and democracies We can use broadband to bring together the farmer and the lawyer, the entrepreneur and the student, the politician and the protestor in a grand conversation on the future of the state.
Access the Presentation (PDF; 48 Slides)
Note: Professor Lankes adds, “Due to conference setup I was not able to capture the audio and screencast. However, the session was video taped, so I hope to add these later.”
Source: Virtual Dave…Real Blog
Tip of the Hat to Gary Price at LinkedIn.
Reference: Policy Agendas Project Database
Budgets & Funding, Civil Society, Collective Intelligence, Cultural Intelligence, Earth Intelligence, Government, Methods & Process, Policies, Policy“Online Database Tracks Congressional, Presidential and Public Priorities”
November 22, 2010 23:10
From a University of Texas at Austin Announcement:
As a new Congress prepares to take office, a powerful online tool from University of Texas at Austin political scientists can help answer questions about lawmakers' shifting focus over time, differences between Republican and Democratic priorities and whether wave elections correlate with policy changes in Washington.
The Policy Agendas Project database allows journalists, scholars and interest groups to easily track and compare the issues that presidents and members of Congress have taken up since 1947 and to assess how those actions reflected the mood of the country.
The interface lets users sift through dozens of issues and sub-issues — health care, the environment, taxes — to look at the topics leaders dealt with in congressional hearings, new laws, executive orders and State of the Union addresses, as well as public opinion about problems facing the nation.
[Clip]
The data generated by the project are free and publicly available. They come with software that allows them to be used in classrooms. Jones and his colleagues released earlier versions of the Policy Agendas Project while he was a professor at the University of Washington.
Tip of the Hat to Gary Price at LinkedIn.
Phi Beta Iota: This has some promise, especially if they design it to be scalable across countries and down to the state and local level. However, since nothing is policy until it is in the budget, the real truth tellers will be if they can link this to actual budgetary authorizations, allocations, and obligations; factor in “true costs” of any given policy element; and open it up to fact-based citizen dialog and deliberation.
Reference: Saving the World–Some Perspectives
Blog Wisdom, Methods & Process, Movies
The Venus Project, Inc is an organization that promotes Jacque Fresco‘s visions of the future with the goal to improve society by moving towards what they call resource-based economy and the design of sustainable cities, energy efficiency, natural resource management and advanced automation, focusing on the benefits they claim it will bring to society.
The Zeitgeist Movement (TZM) is a worldwide grassroots organization that serves as the communication and activist arm of The Venus Project, founded by industrial designer and social engineer Jacque Fresco. It describes itself as a “sustainability advocacy organization” and is focused on raising awareness for a global social change, by transitioning society from a Monetary-Based Economy to a new, sustainable social design called a “Resource-Based Economy”
TEDxDUCTAC – Erika Ilves & Annie McQuade – Project Planet Inc. (YouTube). What do we, as a human race, need to
accomplish in the 21st century? Tune into the most ambitious project in the history of Team Humans. Erika Ilves and Annie McQuade are the Co-Founders of Source Integral, a management consulting firm that build strategies for 21st century challenges, and the minds behind Project Planet Inc and the Planet Inc. CEO. Together they have over 25 years of experience in strategy consulting addressing global challenges and leading large-scale change. They designed “The Planet Inc. CEO Thought Experiment” to help their clients – the world's CEOs, Presidents, and Prime Ministers – punch through to the next level of thinking needed to address the most significant challenges facing the human race. Disciples of Ken Wilbur.
Journal: Wikileaks vs. Empire, Karzai Catch & Release
Articles & Chapters, Blog Wisdom
WikiLeaks vs. Empire
Why is this drama important? Not because of “life-threatening” leaks, as claimed by the establishment, but because the closed doors of power need to be open to public review. We live increasingly in an Age of Secrecy, as described by Garry Wills in Bomb Power, among recent books. It has become the American Way of War, and increasingly draws the curtains over American democracy itself. The wars in Pakistan and Yemen are secret wars. The war in Afghanistan is dominated by secret US Special Operations raids and killings. The CIA has its own secret army in Afghanistan. Gen. Stanley McChrystal's entire record in Iraq was classified. And so on, ad nauseam.
And what is the purpose of all the secrecy? As Howard Zinn always emphasized, the official fear was that the American people might revolt if we knew the secrets being kept from us.
Karzai Catch & Release Program
Afghan President Hamid Karzai and his powerful brother are among a number of senior Afghan figures to be accused of ordering the release of high-ranking Taliban fighters so often that the insurgents now run a commission to secure their freedom.
According to Reuters news agency, the practice is so widespread as to counteract the deterrent effect of capture, and pits Mr Karzai and his coterie directly at odds with the Nato strategy in Afghanistan.
Phi Beta Iota: The Taliban has a one advantage over Karzai–while they both share the revenue from the Afghanistan drug crop and the naive Americans happy to fund corruption in all forms, the Taliban has the added funding channel of the Pakistani ISI, which has been ripping off the CIA for over a billion a year for the past twenty years. In a minor aside, Department of State employees have been forbidden to read any of the documents being made available to the public. Next they will be forbidden to read foreign newspapers lest this treasonous act cause them confusion or cognitive dissonance given the sharp contrast between the “party line” (pun intended) and reality. No room for diversity of view here–reality is what we say it is, because we say so.
Journal: Wikileaks Exposes How NYT and Washington Post Shill for US Government on Iran Missile “Threat”
04 Inter-State Conflict, 05 Iran, 06 Russia, 07 Other Atrocities, 10 Security, Corruption, Government, Journalism/Free-Press/Censorship, Media, Peace IntelligenceIranians (Persians) have viewed Russia (Soviet Union) with distrust and as a menace or outright threat for hundreds of years, at least since the Russian Tsars cemented their expansion into Turkestan (or the Turkic countries in what is now called Central Asia). The fact that Iran sits on top of one of the world's largest reservoirs of oil and gas adds to their fears. Russia is also much closer to Iran than the United States. So from a Russian perspective, the emergence of an Iranian nuclear delivery capability would be a far more dangerous ramifications for Russia than for the US, at least in raw geopolitical terms.
With this in mind, the attached report by Gareth Porter begs the question: Why are the Russians less concerned about the so-called Iranian ballistic missile/nuclear threat than the United States? Why would the Washington Post and New York Times bias their reporting in a way that downplays the Russia's more moderate view?
To ask this question is to answer it. (hint: Simply ask what other country is most obsessed by Iran?) Chuck
December 1, 2010
Documents Show NYT and Washington Post Shilling for US Government on Iran Missile “Threat”
Wikileaks Exposes Complicity of the Press
By GARETH PORTER
A diplomatic cable from last February released by Wikileaks provides a detailed account of how Russian specialists on the Iranian ballistic missile program refuted the U.S. suggestion that Iran has missiles that could target European capitals or intends to develop such a capability.
In fact, the Russians challenged the very existence of the mystery missile the U.S. claims Iran acquired from North Korea.
But readers of the two leading U.S. newspapers never learned those key facts about the document.
The New York Times and Washington Post reported only that the United States believed Iran had acquired such missiles – supposedly called the BM-25 – from North Korea. Neither newspaper reported the detailed Russian refutation of the U.S. view on the issue or the lack of hard evidence for the BM-25 from the U.S. side.
