Public Intelligence Blog – Page 3960 – The truth at any cost lowers all other costs — curated by former US spy Robert David Steele.

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Critical Solutions for Five Billion Poor Including US Poor

January 7, 2008

Paulo Freire

Over a year ago 24 of us decided to co-found the Earth Intelligence Network and begin producing public intelligence in the public interest. We quickly expanded the vision to include a Transpartisan Policy Institute and a Public Budget Office. Today, for free, any citizen can get a weekly report on “GLOBAL CHALLENGES: The Week in Review.” Our free report is superior in multiple ways to the President's Daily Brief, which costs the taxpayer $1.2 billion per WEEK ($60 billion for secret intelligence, pro rated over 52 weeks).

Early on we realized that educating the five billion poor was both a non-negotiable first step, and “mission impossible” if we accepted the standard educational system that is part prison, part child care and part didactic dildo display (my lesson outline is bigger than yours).

Before I read this book, we had conceptualized a concept for educating the five billion poor “one cell call at a time,” leveraging free cell phones and 100 million volunteers covering 183 languages, each using Telelanguage and Skype to be available on demand.

Now, with this book, and also Pedagogy of Freedom: Ethics, Democracy, and Civic Courage (Critical Perspectives Series), I feel we have struck the mother lode.

A few notes and then some other links.

+ Stark critique of the “banking” system of education that deposits knowledge without teaching critical thinking or how to create new knowledge.

+ Relevant to US, not just Third World.

+ It's about class, not race. Concentration of wealth above, poverty below.

+ The author illuminates for all of us “the humanizing voaction of the individual” and the “power of thought to negate accepted limits.”

+ Modern education instills a culture of silence and lethargy. Friere's work instead inspires liberation, dignity, and the ability to change.

+ Illiterates are not stupid, they just cannot read. They *can* be empowered, taught, and energized orally.

+ Education is NOT neutral–it is either teaching for the benefit of the oppressors (producing docile factory workers) or for the benefit of the opprssed (liberating, empowering with individual volition).

+ Dehumanization is a historical reality.

+ False charity perpetuates dependenct.

+ Recognition of reality liberates BOTH the oppressed and the oppressor.

+ Oppressed must break free from “having is being” and learn that “being is enough.”

+ The oppressed cannot be “granted” freedom, it must result from an interactive dialog that liberates both sides

+ Liberation and revolution or transformation for the good of all are essentially pedagogical missions with very high ethical content.

+ Humanizing pedagogy is the anti-thesis of propaganda, manipulation, and deceit.

+ “Co-intentional” education

+ Authentic thinking can only be realized in communication with another

+ Pyramical (one-way) education enslaves, circular (multi-way)education liberates

+ Any educational system that does not respect nor elicit the student's own worldview is culturally invasive

+ Education of the five billion poor must begin by LISTENING to them.

+ “Libertarian education” STARTS with the needs and views of those to be educated.

+ Communion and communication leads to cooperation and cultural synthesis.

A few links:
The Fortune at the Bottom of the Pyramid: Eradicating Poverty Through Profits (Wharton School Publishing Paperbacks)
The Wealth of Networks: How Social Production Transforms Markets and Freedom
The Tao of Democracy: Using Co-Intelligence to Create a World That Works for All
A Power Governments Cannot Suppress
Society's Breakthrough!: Releasing Essential Wisdom and Virtue in All the People
One from Many: VISA and the Rise of Chaordic Organization
The Battle for the Soul of Capitalism

2008/01/072009/10/30

Review: Grand Strategies in War and Peace

4 Star, Strategy

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Gems by Kennedy, can safely skip the rest, January 7, 2008

Paul Kennedy (ed)

I've had this book in my library for many years, but finally pulled it down for a flight to Oklahoma. Bottom line: the gems from the editor in the introduction and conclusion are alone worth the price of the book, you can safely disregard virtually all else. At the end of this review I list some more useful books on grand strategy that merit being read in their entirety.

This book is 17 years old, and hence does not reflect the 4th generation through 7th generation warfare thinking of Max Manwaring, Steve Metz, myself and many others, nor does it reflect the globalization versus jihad and the class war of immoral capitalism.

Gems:

+ Grand strategy is about LONG-TERM interests, not a single Administration's “legacy.”

+ Grand strategy demands the integration of the political, economic, and military (this is not good enough. The US military uses DIME for diplomatic, informational, military, and economic, but my own matrix, documented in my early papers at OSS.Net, distinguishes among:
– Political-legal-military
– Socio-economic
– Ideo-cultural
– Techno-demographic
– Natural-geographic

More recently, to help a presidential contender, I took the ten-high level threats to humanity spelled out in A More Secure World: Our Shared Responsibility–Report of the Secretary-General's High-level Panel on Threats, Challenges and Change, reviewed all the Mandate for Change books going back 20 years, and identified the following twelve policy areas that must be harmonized over time AND (this is IMPORTANT): demonstrated to Brazil, China, India, Indonesia, Iran, Russia, Venezuela, and Wild Cards, so they do not repeat our mistakes.

The ten grand strategy LONG-TERM policies are:
– Agriculture
– Diplomacy
– Economy
– Education
– Energy
– Family
– Health
– Immigration
– Justice
– Security
– Society
– Water

+ Moral resources join human and technical and economic resources as being fundamental to ways and means.

+ Husbanding and managing natural resources for the long-term is vital.

+ Diplomacy is vital (the US spent $30B on this in 2007, against $950B on waging war–in 2008 the Department of State is being down-sized to help pay for the Iraq debacle–this is plain NUTS.

+ Flexibility and frequent adaptation are essential (as opposed to the village idiot mantra, “stay the course”)

+ A true grand strategy has at least as much to do about maintaining a prosperous peace as it does with executing a costly war.

+ Balance in all things among military and non-military, short and long term etc. is critical attribute of sound grand strategy.

+ The US is now strategically vulnerable on all fronts, not least because we allowed our corporations to externalize costs and eliminate home-front capabilities without regard to national prosperity or security.

+ The elements of grand strategy have a multiplier effect on one another. If they are left unattended, the Nation hollows out.

+ Armed forces should be able to deal with multiple contingencies, not just a worst case scenario (see my Joint Forces Quarterly article on the need for four forces after next: Big War, Small War, Peace War, and Homeland Defense.

+ The debt and future unfunded obligations that the Bush-Cheney regime have imposed on future generations are not just irresponsible (the author's view) but constitute high crimes meriting impeachment (my view).

I would love to see the editor of this book convene a grand strategy summit in early 2008, in order to place before We the People, and the varied contenders for the Presidency, a balanced budget 10 years into the future, as a foundation for a national conversation.

A few other books on strategy:
Modern Strategy
The Search for Security: A U.S. Grand Strategy for the Twenty-First Century
The Unconquerable World: Power, Nonviolence, and the Will of the People
The Sorrows of Empire: Militarism, Secrecy, and the End of the Republic (The American Empire Project)
Breaking the Real Axis of Evil: How to Oust the World's Last Dictators by 2025
Failed States: The Abuse of Power and the Assault on Democracy

Under Clinton as well as Bush, the USA made love to 42 of 44 dictators, and prostituted itself to the Saudis and the Israelis.

Under Bush-Cheney, failed states went from 75 in 2005 to 177 in 2007. It is my personal view that Bush should be locked in a closet, Cheney impeached and hanged if convicted (see my itemization of his documented crimes at Vice: Dick Cheney and the Hijacking of the American Presidency, and McCain made our caretaker president with a Democratic vice president. In grand strategy terms, Bush the idiot and Cheney the war criminal have not only burned the White House to the ground, they have burned our seed corn, mortgaged our future, alienated the entire planet, and disgraced the Republic.

2008/01/072014/03/28

Review: Teaching to Transgress–Education as the Practice of Freedom

5 Star, Education (General), Information Society, Intelligence (Collective & Quantum)

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Extremely Good Segue to Freire, January 7, 2008

This is the third of three books on liberation pedagogy that I picked up, the other two being Pedagogy of Freedom: Ethics, Democracy, and Civic Courage (Critical Perspectives Series) and Pedagogy of the Oppressed.

This book is a collection of essays by a woman of color who studied with Freire and found in his works her own liberation and her inspiration to take his ideas and practices further.

I am shocked early on to realize that her description of black schools prior to desegregation as better, because their teachers were passionate about helping them excel, whereas in integrated schools they were treated as second class citizens and taught obedience, rings true.

I see feminist pedagogy in a new more positive light.

The author represents a unique interplay among anticolonial, critical, and feminist pedagogies.

She resonates with me when she speaks of the crisis in education; of our need for a totally renewed educational environment in which biases must be confronted and students liberated.

Her strong statement that education should be the practice of freedom is repeated in many different ways throughout the book.

She states, and I have three sons in public school who would agree, that transgressing wrong-headed boundaries is liberating and entirely called for. She discusses teachers as healers, and throughout this book I gain a deeper broader sense of the pain that minorities and women take pains to repress or conceal because the educational environment is not safe for revelation, only obedience.

I am quite taken by her discussion of the importance of wholeness in teaching, and her engaging discussion of how many professors, especially white mailes, are social misfits who think they can separate their teaching (one-way, authoritarian) without having to engage with students of be whole themselves. She is especially hard on the manner in which they treat the classroom as personal fiefdoms where they can exercise unchallenged authority.

She says that resistance must include the unconvering of lost knowledge. I am reminded of Fog Facts: Searching for Truth in the Land of Spin and Lost History: Contras, Cocaine, the Press & ‘Project Truth'.

She quotes Martin Luther King in emphasizing, as he did, that shared values and a focus on people are essential is we are to contain, in his words, “the giant triplets of racism, materialism, and militarism.”

She teaches that cultural diversity is INCLUSIVE, and it is not about substituting one culture over another in the relation pecking order. I am reminded of two books I recently reviewed, The Web of Inclusion: Architecture for Building Great Organizations and The Difference: How the Power of Diversity Creates Better Groups, Firms, Schools, and Societies.

She states that teaching that does not include explicit awareness of race, sex, or class, lacks liberating context.

She cites Terry Eagleton who says “Children make the best theorists,” for not being indoctrinated, and I am reminded of how many arguments I have lost to my 18-year-old when “because I say so” just does not suffice.

I am fascinated by her discussion of how standards can suppresses, norms can neutralize.

She spends time on the importance of theory as a space, a place, for sense-making and reconciliation.

She cites Full in noting that the boundaries between insiders and outsiders contain information rather than allowing the dissemination of knowledge. I am reminded of The Pathology of Power – A Challenge to Human Freedom and Safety.

The author offers a very effective critique of the ignorance, stereotyping, and lack of understanding with which white professors wrote about black reality.

I am not doing justice to the essays on existentialism and on black-white women in relation and in critique of one another, but she notes that resolution between them demands joint collective dialog.

As the book of essays winds down I have a few notes:

+ Habit versus voice

+ Must teach students how to LISTEN

+ Being a teacher is about BEING with people

+ Pedagogy can be, should be, political activism

+ Queens in New York City has 17,000 people speaking 66 languages

+ Class matters, and is too often left unaddressed. I am reminded of Global Class War

Her final note: Learning is a place where paradise can be created. We must learn to transgress freely, and thereby demonstrate that education IS freedom. I am reminded of Improper behavior.

I would not have appreciated this book and the author's insights as easily had I not first read t he two works by Friere that I cite above. The author honors and exceeds her model, this is a very fine book, and I would add in passing that I also found Cornell West's Democracy Matters: Winning the Fight Against Imperialism to be a Nobel-level reflection.

Very highly recommended.

2008/01/062014/03/28

Review: Pedagogy of Freedom–Ethics, Democracy, and Civic Courage

6 Star Top 10%, Democracy, Education (General), Intelligence (Collective & Quantum), Intelligence (Public), Values, Ethics, Sustainable Evolution

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January 6, 2008

Paulo Freire

I am one of 24 co-founders of Earth Intelligence Network, building the EarthGame with inputs from the Transpartisan Policy Institute and the Public Budget Office, and our biggest insight in the past year has been to realize that the 5 billion poor do not have 18 years to go to school; but that they can be taught orally, one cell call at a time, by 100 million volunteers with Internet access and Skype. We simply have to distribute free cell phones in order to help the five billion create stabilizing wealth.

It was therefore for me personally, at the age of 55, a true joy to run across both this book and Pedagogy of the Oppressed as well as Teaching to Transgress: Education as the Practice of Freedom both of which I will review shortly.

The only two books coming close in my own reading history, apart from Chomsky, Ellul, and Marcuse, have been Radical Man: The Process of Psycho-Social Development. and Improper behavior. See also Rule by Secrecy: The Hidden History That Connects the Trilateral Commission, the Freemasons, and the Great Pyramids and Animal Farm (Signet Classics).

The translator tells us that Friere opposed the movement of gaduate studies in education toward atomization, fragmentation, and a false science, “scientism.” The translator is *damning* of the Harvard Graduate School of Education, and I believe all that he says.

The translator emphasizes that across Friere's works, he condemns false claims of neutrality and objectivity, and says clearly that education is an ethical calling that has a strong need to take a stand on what is good and right.

All three of my children have rejected rote learning, even as taught in the best public school district in America, and I am deeply sympathetic with this author's views that teaching should not be about the transfer of old knowledge but rather about the interactive sharing in learning to create new knowledge. Team leaning, learning to learn, open books testing–that is the way to go, in my view. See also Edutopia: Success Stories for Learning in the Digital Age.

We learn that Friere's first book, to set this one in context, taught that education is “that specifically human act of intervention in the world.”

I completely agree when it is stated that the transformation of education must be the foundation for the transformation of all else.

I copy a note “Education *makes* history” (as opposed to losing it).

Note from the book: Democracy from below. Human liberation. Educators inspire rather than shape. See The Tao of Democracy: Using Co-Intelligence to Create a World That Works for All.

The book emphasizes that the study of the oppressed has been squelched by those in authority, inclusive of higher graduate education studies, as an ideological act that declines to recognize that the oppressed are in fact, OPPRESSED, not just poor, lazy, stupid, or otherwise self-condemned.

Note: Curiosity + education + humanity = infinite power.” See A Power Governments Cannot Suppress.

Friere repeatedly returns to a key point, that thinking is an act of communication, and can only take place interactively. Teaching and research should comprise an endless cycle and not be a one-way street (didactic is a fancy word for “I talk, you listen.”)

Progressive teaching respects students and favors student autonomhy. As best I can tell, Evergreen College in Washington State is the gold standard for this kind of teaching.

Friere tells us that teachers who impose no standards, no discipline, are just as bad as teachers who are authoritarian and leave no room for student autonomy or curiosity.

Friere tells us that teachers must apprehend and comprend reality, and not seek to condition students into accepting their poor conditions (or corrupt governances–see Earth Intelligence Network for a range for free offerings on reality).

Friere states firmly that “RealPolitic” is inhumane and wrong. See The Health of Nations: Society and Law beyond the State.

The book closes with an elegant discussion of how education leads to decision-making that is aware and conscientious. I have long advocated the need for public intelligence, and for a relationship between how we learn and how we decide. “Intelligence” is about decision-support, not about spying.

My final two notes from this superb book:

1) To accept and respect differences (i.e. diversity) is essential to listening and learning.

2) Globalization (when combined with 44 dictators and the global class war) is oppressive in its ignorance (or concealment) of the human cost, the cost to humanity.

2008/01/052011/10/22

Review: From Hope to Higher Ground–12 STEPS to Restoring America’s Greatness

5 Star, Biography & Memoirs, Politics, Priorities

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One of Two Formula Books in My Four-Book Look

January 5, 2008

Mike Huckabee

I bought four of Governor Huckabee's books, and spent much of Sunday going through them. I've decided to do one review posted four times, to provide anyone visiting one of the four books to see four snapshots in one place. I am NOT looking for multiple votes. This is my bottom-line over-all assessment of one of the three people I believe is qualified to b;ring our Nation together, the others being Senator Obama, and Representative Paul, who will not win but could demand electoral reform when Congress returns. The two formula books lose one star each but in no way does this discredit the substance within each.

1998, Kids Who Kill: Confronting Our Culture of Violence is his first book and also the most earnest. I like this book, very much. The Governor weaves a rich tapesty of a culture of disrespect, too many bad laws, not enough community and faith, and I for one buy into his message: our society has fragmented and we reap what we sow. See also my reviews of:
Rage of the Random Actor: Disarming Catastrophic Acts And Restoring Lives
The Cheating Culture: Why More Americans Are Doing Wrong to Get Ahead

2000, Living Beyond Your Lifetime: How to be Intentional About the Legacy You Leave. I find this book equally earnest, with a very strong consistent appreciation for God and faith and community in faith, for stewardship. Like the first book, I give this one five stars. I now include this book with other positive books on religion, see my reviews of:
GOD'S POLITICS: Why The Right Gets It Wrong & The Left Doesn't Get It (H)
The Left Hand of God: Taking Back Our Country from the Religious Right
Faith-Based Diplomacy: Trumping Realpolitik

2007 Character Makes a Difference: Where I'm From, Where I've Been, and What I Believe, and 2007, this book, are both formula books, somewhat contrived, but earnest and sufficient to come to at least two conclusions:

1) This citizen is not going to let go of God or faith. He is completely different from Milt Romney, whom I consider to be just a little too slick about his Mormon loyalties (CIA officers who were Mormons would fall asleep at their desks because the Mormon church had them up working all night).

2) This is a sincere good man (I based this on seeing him elsewhere as well). I frankly think that he brings the right respect for faith and God, and we need some of that in the White House, not lies and treason documented in Tempting Faith: An Inside Story of Political Seduction and American Fascists: The Christian Right and the War On America. As an estranged moderate Republican and Methodist, outrages by the crimes committed in our name, I think its time we had a moderate faith in God back in the White House.

The latter book touches on various “mandate for change” issues, and one has to be somewhat dubious on his record, since more than one person from Arkansas has told me they lost income and the schools lost funding during his tenure.

We need change. I'd like to see Mike Huckabee lead a dialog with all congregations on God's Politics, the Left Hand of God, and Faith-Based Golden Rule morality in all our policies at all levels. Barack Obama is energizing the young, but still severely handicapped by his elderly advisors who are out of touch with global reality.

In my view, as a person who cares deeply about the Republic and has spent the last 15 years obsessing on global reality and a strategy for saving the Earth for seven generations and beyond, I would like to see Mike Huckabee being the evangelicals back into the fold, without the attendant lunacy and criminality that characterized the Bush-Cheney White House.

Please do not vote for this review in more than one place.

2008/01/052009/10/17

Review: Kids Who Kill–Confronting Our Culture of Violence

5 Star, Culture, DVD - Light, Politics, Religion & Politics of Religion

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1998, the most earnest book (his first), January 5, 2008

January 5, 2008

Mike Huckabee

1998,this book, Kids Who Kill, the most earnest. I like this book, very much. The Governor weaves a rich tapesty of a culture of disrespect, too many bad laws, not enough community and faith, and I for one buy into his message: our society has fragmented and we reap what we sow. See also my reviews of:
Rage of the Random Actor: Disarming Catastrophic Acts And Restoring Lives
The Cheating Culture: Why More Americans Are Doing Wrong to Get Ahead

2007 Character Makes a Difference: Where I'm From, Where I've Been, and What I Believe
2007 From Hope to Higher Ground: My Vision for Restoring America's Greatness

Both of the above are formula books, somewhat contrived, but earnest and sufficient to come to at least two conclusions:

Please do not vote for this review in more than one place.

2008/01/052011/10/22

Review: Living Beyond Your Lifetime–How to be Intentional About the Legacy You Leave

5 Star, Future, Politics, Religion & Politics of Religion, Values, Ethics, Sustainable Evolution

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Final Review of Four Books Taken Together

January 5, 2008

Mike Huckabee

1998,Kids Who Kill: Confronting Our Culture of Violence, is his first book and also the most earnest. I like this book, very much. The Governor weaves a rich tapesty of a culture of disrespect, too many bad laws, not enough community and faith, and I for one buy into his message: our society has fragmented and we reap what we sow. See also my reviews of:
Rage of the Random Actor: Disarming Catastrophic Acts And Restoring Lives
The Cheating Culture: Why More Americans Are Doing Wrong to Get Ahead

2000, this book, I find equally earnest, with a very strong consistent appreciation for God and faith and community in faith, for stewardship. Like the first book, I give this one five stars. I now include this book with other positive books on religion, see my reviews of:
GOD'S POLITICS: Why The Right Gets It Wrong & The Left Doesn't Get It (H)
The Left Hand of God: Taking Back Our Country from the Religious Right
Faith-Based Diplomacy: Trumping Realpolitik

2007 Character Makes a Difference: Where I'm From, Where I've Been, and What I Believe
2007 From Hope to Higher Ground: My Vision for Restoring America's Greatness

Both of the above are formula books, somewhat contrived, but earnest and sufficient to come to at least two conclusions:

Please do not vote for this review in more than one place.