Month: February 2010

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Worth a Look: Citizen Intelligence on Homeland Security Waste

Collective Intelligence, Methods & Process, Worth A Look

Starting in the fall of 2008, the Center for Investigative Reporting and The Center for Public Integrity fielded a team of reporters to examine how effectively governments at all levels had managed money and programs dedicated to homeland security.  The result was a series of stories — and an interactive map — that have been combined into a single collaborative website

A Troubled History …   Is Congress Failing on Homeland Security Oversight? …    Homeland Security’s Billion-Dollar Bet on Better Communications …   Interoperability: A Priority for Homeland Security? …   Homeland Security Marked by Waste, Lack of Oversight …   Assessing RNC Police Tactics, Part I …   Assessing RNC Police Tactics, Part II …   Fighting Crime with Computers in Minnesota …   A Legacy of Spying …   Are Things Any Different in Denver? …   Homeland Security Pays Dividends for Alaska

Phi Beta Iota: What we really admire is the team's organization: Editoral Team, Reporting Team, Fact Checking, Data Analysis, Web/Multimedia, Web Design, Media, and Funding.

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Journal: Goldman Sachs Outed, European Audit Soon?

03 Economy, 08 Wild Cards, Commerce, Commercial Intelligence, Ethics, Government, Law Enforcement

Chuck Spinney

Goldman Goes Rogue – Special European Audit To Follow

Simon Johnson     Baseline Scenario      February 14, 2009

We now learn – from Der Spiegel last week and today’s NYT – that Goldman Sachs has not only helped or encouraged some European governments to hide a large part of their debts, but it also endeavored to do so for Greece as recently as last November.  These actions are fundamentally destabilizing to the global financial system, as they undermine: the eurozone area; all attempts to bring greater transparency to government accounting; and the most basic principles that underlie well-functioning markets.  When the data are all lies, the outcomes are all bad – see the subprime mortgage crisis for further detail.

A single rogue trader can bring down a bank – remember the case of Barings.  But a single rogue bank can bring down the world’s financial system.

Goldman will dismiss this as “business as usual” and, to be sure, a few phone calls around Washington will help ensure that Goldman’s primary supervisor – now the Fed – looks the other way.

But the affair is now out of Ben Bernanke’s hands, and quite far from people who are easily swayed by the White House.  It goes immediately to the European Commission, which has jurisdiction over eurozone budget issues.  Faced with enormous pressure from those eurozone countries now on the hook for saving Greece, the Commission will surely launch a special audit of Goldman and all its European clients.

Phi Beta Iota: The balance of the above article is a “must read.”

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MILNET Headlines 17 February 2010

Uncategorized

Air Sensor:  Army seeks to revive airships as sensor platforms

Cyber-Diplomacy: US officials, Web executives to visit Russia

Cyber-Security:  Congress urged to move one cybersecurity bill

Cyber-Security:  New IP task force brings “stronger and stricter enforcement”

Cyber-Security:  Simulation shows government lacks policies needed to respond

Cyber-Security:  Software developers are to blame for most cyberattacks,

Cyber-Security:  US Secret Service Network Intrusion Program

DHS: We’re ‘Monitoring’ Danger Room

Google Ubber Alles:  Google to run Yale e-mail

State Rights:  Texas to challenge US greenhouse gas rules

US Economy:  Drowning in Debt: What the Nation's Budget Woes Mean for You

US Economy:  Lone voice warns of debt threat to Fed

US Government:  Public Input on Open Government Solicited

US Military:  The Military's New Surge In Accountability

US Policy:  Did Ameirca or Pakistan Double Cross the Taliban CEO?

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Journal: Israel Bombs Gaza Agriculture

Uncategorized
Chuck Spinney

Worth a close read.  This is the daily drill.

Israel bombs Gaza's agricultural sector to the brink

Eva Bartlett, The Electronic Intifada, 15 February 2010

One of Many Wells Destroyed
With most of Gaza's border region wells, cisterns and water lines destroyed by Israeli forces during last winter's attacks, farmers have been largely left with no option but to wait for heavier rains.
“Israeli soldiers started intensively bulldozing the land in 2003. But they finished the job in the last war on Gaza,” says Hamdan Abu Taima, owner of 30 dunams (1 dunam is approximate to 1,000 square meters) dangerously close to the buffer zone.
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Journal: Potential End to Two-Party Monopoly

Collective Intelligence, Government

Disillusioned Bayh advocates electoral “shock” to broken system

In an interview on MSNBC this morning, newly retiring Sen. Evan Bayh declared the American political system “dysfunctional,” riddled with “brain-dead partisanship” and permanent campaigning. Flatly denying any possibility that he'd seek the presidency or any other higher office, Bayh argued that the American people needed to deliver a “shock” to Congress by voting incumbents out en masse and replacing them with people interested in reforming the process and governing for the good of the people, rather than deep-pocketed special-interest groups.

Phi Beta Iota: For some time now, since we published ELECTION 2008: Lipstick on the Pig, we have sought to do three things:  1)  show the 70% that did not vote for President Barack Obama that Electoral Reform is the only thing that will cure Washington, and also the only thing needed to restore the Constitution and the Republic; 2) show Barack Obama, beginning with a memorandum under his hotel room door in Des Moines that he needs to eject the partisans from the White House and begin governing with a coaltion cabinet and an open source decision support network; and 3) show all those who claim to be interested in transpartisan or post-partisan processes that holding hands and singing kum-ba-ya together is not enough–a Strategic Analytic Model is needed, along with a Policy-Budget Outreach Web that allows all citizens to be connected with all relevant information so as to have informed appreciative dialog online, harnessing all humans minds to create a Smart Nation.

We recommend a three-pronged strategy for liberty:

1)  Electoral Reform at the state and local level beginning with wide open ballot access for 2010 or we recall every Governor and Secretary of State who persists in protecting the two-party tyranny through restricted ballot access

2)  Electoral Reform at the national level–any Member not sponsoring and voting for the Electoral Reform Act in time for 2010 (first four provisions) will be rejected at election or recalled if a Senator not up for reelection.

3)  Aggressive state nullification of all federal programs inclusive of income tax levies until such time as the Secretary of the Treasury and the Federal Reserve are fully transparent.

We strongly support elected President Barack Obama and elected Vice President Joe Biden.  If they cleanse the White House of the partisan hacks (Emmanuel, Axelrod, and Plouffe), get themselves a Chief of Staff that can manage in the public chief, and get themselves an intelligence community leadership able to deliver public decision support on the ten threats and twelve policies to all levels of government, there is every reason to believe that this Administration can still be rescued from itself and that Barack Obama can rise to his rhetorical potential with real non-partisan governance.  Absent such a change, he will not be re-elected and an Independent promising a coalition cabinet and an end to winner take all control of Congress will probably win in 2012.  America is awake, fed up, and on the move.

See Also (Graphics, Reviews of Solutions, Secession, and Problems)

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Review: Yachtsman in Red China

5 Star, Biography & Memoirs, Sailing
Amazon Page
5.0 out of 5 stars Real Life From Building the Boat to Being Captured by the Chinese

February 16, 2010

David J. Steele

I watched my father build the Piver Tri-Maran in his garage and front yard of our home in Saigon, South Viet-Nam (at the time). This book is a still exciting story of an oil engineer and manager (at the time in charge of all Esso supply for all of Viet-Nam) who built a boat from scratch and sailed it from Saigon toward Hong Kong.

20 miles off the coast of Hainan (by his calculations) he was rammed by militia-pirates and the boat sunk, leaving him in the water. He was taken prisoner and vanished from the public eye. Months later he was released into Hong Kong with some photos of pieces of his boat washed up on shore, and his sextant.

The best part of the book for me has always been his account of being treated as a guest rather than a prisoner in China, and when asked what Americans drank with their meals, his response “a big bottle of beer.” That's what he got, and he claims that is why he only lost 40 pounds or whatever it was.

I still have the “little red book” he was given to read while a prisoner. My positive opinion of the Chinese has been shaped in part by their very dignified treatment of my father as a quasi-prisoner, combined with my finishing high school in Singapore at a time when Minister-Mentor Lee Kuan Yew was just hitting his statesmanlike-stride.

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