October 2009 – Page 26 – Public Intelligence Blog

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Chuck Spinney has nominated this short piece,

Instead of Bombs and Bribes, Let’s Try Empathy and Trade

Representative Ron Paul, October 6, 2009

What if tomorrow morning you woke up to headlines that yet another Chinese drone bombing on U.S. soil killed several dozen ranchers in a rural community while they were sleeping? That a drone aircraft had come across the Canadian border in the middle of the night and carried out the latest of many attacks? What if it was claimed that many of the victims harbored anti-Chinese sentiments, but most of the dead were innocent women and children? And what if the Chinese administration, in an effort to improve its public image in the U.S., had approved an aid package to send funds to help with American roads and schools and promote Chinese values here?

Continue reading “Journal: Ron Paul, Grand Strategy, Ahem”

2009/10/062009/10/06

Journal: MI-5 Book by Christopher Andrew

10 Security, Law Enforcement

Badly marketed on Amazon by a publisher that evidently does not really care for the future of the book, we do what we can to highlight the availability of this new book by Christopher Andrew, In Defence of the Realm, an authorized but not controlled examination of the history of MI-5 (internal security) in the United Kingdom. A short article on the book:

Defence of the Realm: author marks 100 years of MI5 with official history

Within the USA there has never been a proper review that we know of with respect to internal security, although there have been a number of books on the failures of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), a few of which we list below. The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) has been an abysmal expensive failure in all respects, substituting money, technology, and butts in seats for thinking, education, and common sense.

Continue reading “Journal: MI-5 Book by Christopher Andrew”

2009/10/062009/10/06

Journal: Lee Hamilton on Congress

Collective Intelligence, Ethics, Government, Reform

Overview

Is This The Congress We Want? We Can't Wait Much Longer To Fix Congress Lobbying Murkiness Undermines Our Trust in Congress Congress Confuses the Public and Itself Congressional Bickering Who Lobbies for the Rest of Us? It's Time for the Public to Fund Congressional Travel Congress Needs to Invigorate Its Ethics System, Not Weaken It Why Congress Must Learn To Look Ahead Broken Budget Process Congress and Individual Liberties A Balanced View of Congress The Money Chase Tackling the Tough Issues Is Congress out of Touch? Congress and the Pork Barrel

Phi Beta Iota: Lee Hamilton, a Representative for 30+ years, now leads The Center on Congress at Indiana University. He is unique for being the single voice most responsible for putting an Open Source Agency (OSA) on pages 23 and 413 of the 9-11 Commission Report, something he did on the basis of what he learned from being on the Aspin-Brown Commission and watching the “The Burundi Exercise” that pitted Robert Steele with six open source telephone calls against the entire U.S. Intelligence Community. Steele won, producing commercial imagery, Russian 1:50 combat charts, a list of the top academic experts; a list of the top journalists; tribal orders of battle including technical, etcetera. CIA had a cute little map of the region and a regional economic study with flawed assumptions (mirroring). Each of the above is a separate short discourse, each worthy of every citizen's attention.

2009/10/06

Journal: Klepto-Capitalism (Legalized Looting)

03 Economy, Commerce, Commercial Intelligence, Ethics, Government

Chuck Spinney weighs in today on the manner in which the US citizen is being looted–right now, as this is written–by private equity firms (Allen & Co comes to mind, home to Bill Bradley and George Tenet), and point us to an article in Naked Capitalism worthy of review.

There has been a convergence of inattentive and under-informed citizens (including employees ill-served by labor unions that have themselves sold out); managers lacking in integrity and all too willing to serve as intermediaries in the destruction of public equity in favor of private equity; and of course Wall Street, which bought Congress, owns the Federal Reserve, and has crafted modern legalized looting or “klepto-capitalism.”

Monday, October 5, 2009

Quelle Surprise! New York Times Fails to Call Private Equity Looting by Its Proper Name

The New York Times tonight features a generally very good piece, “Buyout Firms Profited as a Company’s Debt Soared,” by Julie Creswell that falls short in one important respect: it fails to call a prevalent and destructive practice of private equity firms by its proper name.

2009/10/062009/10/06

Journal: The Demise of the Dollar

03 Economy, Commerce, Commercial Intelligence, Ethics, Government

The demise of the dollar

In a graphic illustration of the new world order, Arab states have launched secret moves with China, Russia and France to stop using the US currency for oil trading

By Robert Fisk

Tuesday, 6 October 2009

In the most profound financial change in recent Middle East history, Gulf Arabs are planning – along with China, Russia, Japan and France – to end dollar dealings for oil, moving instead to a basket of currencies including the Japanese yen and Chinese yuan, the euro, gold and a new, unified currency planned for nations in the Gulf Co-operation Council, including Saudi Arabia, Abu Dhabi, Kuwait and Qatar.

Phi Beta Iota: This is what happens when citizens abdicate their role as sovereigns over Congress, and allow Congress to sell out to Wall Street and the Federal Reserve (which is neither Federal nor a Reserve, just a front for Wall Street).

2009/10/052009/10/05

AFRICOM Week in Review Ending 05 Oct 09

Uncategorized

Hot Topics

AA: SA slips in governance ratings 10/01/09

GN: Thousands of people have gathered at a mosque in Guinea's capital … 10/02/09

MG: Madagascar says consensus government not viable 10/04/09

NG: Nigeria rebel disarms under amnesty 10/04/09

SO: Somali gunmen release 3 foreign aid workers 10/03/09

SO: Somalia: Harakat Al-Shabab Mujahideen Forces Closes Down Local FM … 10/01/09

UG: Uganda: EU Suspends Funding to AU Peacekeepers 10/02/09

ZA: A bad week for South Africa 10/04/09

ZM: Zambia: China's Success Story – Myth Or Reality? 10/02/09

Below the Fold: Instability, Special Operations, Security Forces, Foreign Affairs, Crime

Continue reading “AFRICOM Week in Review Ending 05 Oct 09”

2009/10/052010/09/20

Reference: Russell Ackoff on Doing Right Things Righter

About the Idea, Alpha A-D, Articles & Chapters, Collective Intelligence, Commercial Intelligence, Cultural Intelligence, Earth Intelligence, Historic Contributions, Reform

Phi Beta Iota: Government is broken. Ron Paul has that exactly right. It is broken for two reasons: first because over time those spending the money have grown distant from those providing the money, the individual taxpayers, AND from reality. The second reason it is broken is because knowledge itself has become fragmented, and “systems thinking” has fallen by the wayside.

Below are three quotes from a tremendous reference of lasting value to every citizen and policymaker.

ONE: Reformations and transformations are not the same thing. Reformations are concerned with changing the means systems employ to pursue their objectives. Transformations involve changes in the objectives they pursue.

TWO: The righter we do the wrong thing, the wronger we become. When we make a mistake doing the wrong thing and correct it, we become wronger. When we make a mistake doing the right thing and correct it, we become righter. Therefore, it is better to do the right thing wrong than the wrong thing right. This is very significant because almost every problem confronting our society is a result of the fact that our public policy makers are doing the wrong things and are trying to do them righter.

Continue reading “Reference: Russell Ackoff on Doing Right Things Righter”