Serious People Believe This Nails the JFK Assassination for Real
February 28, 2010
As a recovering spy who went on to champion Open Source Intelligence (OSINT), whose mantra is “the truth at any cost reduces all other costs,” I read this book long ago, found it very creidble (I was in Viet-Nam from 1963-1967 and historically have always been morally and intellectually ashamed of how CIA–not JFK–allowed and encouraged the internal assassination of Ngo Dinh Diem, the Catholic Mandarin from whom we voilated the Geneva Convention and trashed Viet-Nam for a decade.
This book, I found recently, while discussing the below JFK books I have reviewed, is taken very seriously by individuals close to two Presidents. Personally I think the CIA tacit consent, Cuban exiles out of Miami trained by CIA is much more likely–the fraudelent Secret Service credentials that allowed the killers and associates to escape are one indicator for me. In any event, this novel is terribly, terribly on target with respect to the possibilities.
My many book reviews on Viet-Nam are easily accessed at Phi Beta Iota the Public Intelligence Blog, all my reviews lead back to their Amazon home page.
This entire site is about Open Source Intelligence (OSINT) and its follow-on, Multinational, Multiagency, Multidisciplinary, Multidomain Information-Sharing and Sense-Making (M4IS2), so your search might have been better off with just a search for basics, or training, but here is what human-in-the-loop offers both to answer your question and to result in an automated hit the next time someone asks the same question.
ADM McConnell has it right, although he's understating a key aspect of the problem. Let's postulate that we have abundant technical capability. The core of the problem, IMHO, lies with lawyers and legislators who will not permit effective utilization of the technical capability. While easier said than done, particularly in terms of domestic and international politics, we need a paradigm shift to a posture akin to Winston Churchill's charge to the World War II Special Operations Executive: “Set Europe Ablaze.” Let the dog bite a few malefactors.) MA Sends.
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To Win The Cyber-War, Look To The Cold War
By Mike McConnell
The United States is fighting a cyber-war today, and we are losing. It's that simple. As the most wired nation on Earth, we offer the most targets of significance, yet our cyber-defenses are woefully lacking.
The problem is not one of resources; even in our current fiscal straits, we can afford to upgrade our defenses. The problem is that we lack a cohesive strategy to meet this challenge.
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How do we apply deterrence in the cyber-age? For one, we must clearly express our intent. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton offered a succinct statement to that effect last month in Washington, in a speech on Internet freedom. “Countries or individuals that engage in cyber-attacks should face consequences and international condemnation,” she said. “In an Internet-connected world, an attack on one nation's networks can be an attack on all.”
PHI BETA IOTA EMPHASIS: On Port-au-Prince's streets Saturday, many people had not heard of Chile's quake. More than half a million are homeless, most still lack electricity and are preoccupied about trying to get enough to eat.
Low Income Housing Survived--Full Story Online
PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti – The earthquake in Chile was far stronger than the one that struck Haiti last month — yet the death toll in this Caribbean nation is magnitudes higher.
The reasons are simple.
Chile is wealthier and infinitely better prepared, with strict building codes, robust emergency response and a long history of handling seismic catastrophes. No living Haitian had experienced a quake at home when the Jan. 12 disaster crumbled their poorly constructed buildings.
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Sinclair said he has architect colleagues in Chile who have built thousands of low-income housing structures to be earthquake resistant.
In Haiti, by contrast, there is no building code.
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Haiti: recovery beginning in the heart of hellIt took half a minute for last month’s earthquake to destroy Haiti – rebuilding it will take years. Sally Williams watches the Red Cross, which has supplied 600 of the 6,000 aid workers now in the country, in action.
With a population of as many as three million, Port-au-Prince was a vibrant city, its streets choked with buses and motorcycles. Today you see the legacy of the disaster everywhere: surgeons in scrubs walk the streets; dust suffuses everything, irritating the nasal passages and lungs; surfaces are cracked and fractured – nothing seems fixed or hard; government papers from the national archive blow across the street. The decorative pink stone of the Roman Catholic cathedral, built nearly a century ago, is now a scene of utter devastation. Even those buildings that are still standing (up to 50 per cent of the city was destroyed) are at oblique angles, intersecting with a disorientating effect.
Port-au-Prince seems not like a city at all now, but a waking nightmare where even the most ordinary morning walk can turn distinctly lurid. There is a car in one of the streets behind the national palace that has been flattened by falling masonry. The driver’s body is still at the wheel.
Phi Beta Iota: Red Cross collected 90% of the money, is doing 10% of the work, and has reached, at best, 20% of the needy. What's wrong with this picture? We speculate: massive corruption–both industrial (old inefficient processes) and intentional (on-going overhead and endowment padding) inherent in “the Red Cross way.”
Memorandum submitted by the Institute of Physics (CRU 39)
The disclosure of climate data from the Climatic Research Unit at the University of East Anglia
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The Institute of Physics is a scientific charity devoted to increasing the practice, understanding and application of physics. It has a worldwide membership of over 36,000 and is a leading communicator of physics-related science to all audiences, from specialists through to government and the general public. Its publishing company, IOP Publishing, is a world leader in scientific publishing and the electronic dissemination of physics.
The Institute is pleased to submit its views to inform the House of Commons Science and Technology Committee's inquiry, ‘The disclosure of climate data from the Climatic Research Unit at the University of East Anglia'.
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2. The CRU e-mails as published on the internet provide prima facieevidence of determined and co-ordinated refusals to comply with honourable scientific traditions and freedom of information law. The principle that scientists should be willing to expose their ideas and results to independent testing and replication by others, which requires the open exchange of data, procedures and materials, is vital. The lack of compliance has been confirmed by the findings of the Information Commissioner. This extends well beyond the CRU itself – most of the e-mails were exchanged with researchers in a number of other international institutions who are also involved in the formulation of the IPCC's conclusions on climate change.
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6. There is also reason for concern at the intolerance to challenge displayed in the e-mails. This impedes the process of scientific ‘self correction', which is vital to the integrity of the scientific process as a whole, and not just to the research itself. In that context, those CRU e-mails relating to the peer-review process suggest a need for a review of its adequacy and objectivity as practised in this field and its potential vulnerability to bias or manipulation.
7. Fundamentally, we consider it should be inappropriate for the verification of the integrity of the scientific process to depend on appeals to Freedom of Information legislation. Nevertheless, the right to such appeals has been shown to be necessary. The e-mails illustrate the possibility of networks of like-minded researchers effectively excluding newcomers. Requiring data to be electronically accessible to all, at the time of publication, would remove this possibility.
Phi Beta Iota: The most significant recommendation, toward the end, bears on scientific journals establishing new forms of transparency that demand that prior to publication of their claimed work, authors make available online all relevant reports and research.
The real story has been taking place in Afghanistan during the past two months. Last month the Taliban began attacking large Afghan population centers in such locations as Kabul, Lashkar Gah and Khost and this month there were two attacks in Kandahar, the latest on February 7th which blew up a bridge killing four police officers. There have been other attacks which have not been reported in the mainstream media, including the February 11th attack inside a U.S. combat outpost near the Pakistan border in Paktia province which injured five American soldiers from the 48th Brigade of the Georgia National Guard and there was a February 12th suicide bomb attack in Kandahar that wounded six American soldiers. In the January 19, 2010, edition of Pakistan’s Dawn newspaper, British General David Richards announced that:
“The Taliban have given orders to their people to attack in as many different places as they possibly can – in order to reinforce the impression of being everywhere.”
This is the same type of strategy employed by the Viet Cong during the period of Tet, or Vietnamese Lunar New Year, in February 1968. It launched a month-long series of attacks across the length of South Vietnam targeting most of the country’s provincial capitals. The assaults were militarily unsuccessful, but they had a major psychological impact which changed the course of the war and began a slow withdrawal of American forces from that country.
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Without an elemental change in thinking, which NATO bureaucrats would probably never accept or even understand, NATO will not be able to regain what it has lost. NATO is limited in its ability to launch many more Marjah-style operations. If NATO fails to innovate and reform, the agenda at the next Loya Jirga may be a proposal of amnesty extended to President Hamid Karzai to join the Taliban’s Government.
Phi Beta Iota: Below are some references. Wrong war, wrong force, wrong allies and wrong intentions. The US Government continues to lack a strategic analytic model or the integrity to make global foreign policy and national security decisions on the basis of 360 reality front (future) and back (history). It is equally deficient in making informed domestic decisions. Our newest book, INTELLIGENCE for EARTH: Clarity, Diversity, Integrity, & Sustainability, speaks to this matter. We have no doubt there will be a Voice TO America based in Cuba, within five years if not sooner, very possibly supported by the entire Southern Hemisphere.
Serious People Believe This Nails the JFK Assassination for Real
