Month: December 2010

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Journal: Near-Term Demise of Private Military Contractors

10 Security, 11 Society, Commerce, Corruption, Cultural Intelligence, Government, IO Multinational, Military, Officers Call, Peace Intelligence
DefDog Recommends...

Former Blackwater Bought By Investment Group

by The Associated Press

RALEIGH, N.C. December 17, 2010, 10:38 am ET

An investment group with ties to the founder of the company formerly known as Blackwater announced Friday that it has bought the security firm, which was heavily criticized for its contractors' actions in Iraq.

USTC Holdings said in a statement that the acquisition of the company now called Xe Services includes its training facility in North Carolina.

Terms of the deal were not disclosed. But the statement said owner and founder Erik Prince will no longer have an equity stake and no longer be involved in Xe's management or operations. The company will be managed by a board appointed by the equity holders and will include independent, unaffiliated directors, the statement said.

The ownership group is led by two private equity firms, including New York-based Forte Capital Advisors. Forte managing partner Jason DeYonker has been a longtime financial adviser to Prince, helping him expand the Moyock, N.C., training grounds and negotiating Blackwater's first training contracts with the U.S. government.

“The future of this industry belongs to those companies with the highest standards of governance, transparency, and performance,” DeYonker said.

Read rest of article (includes photos)…

Phi Beta Iota: Winston Churchill is known for saying Americans always do the right thing, they just try everything else first.  Similarly, Russell Ackoff is known for saying that we have to stop doing the wrong things righter, and instead do the right thing.  Private Military Contractors (PMC) are the wrong thing!  Multinational hybrid task forces are the right thing–cheaper, faster, better in all respects.  All we need to bring is integrity and intelligence (decision-support).  PMC's loot our own highly qualified human resources; cheat the taxpayer twice over (the government does it once first by hiring them in the first place); and are one step short of air dropping liquid feces over an entire area of responsibility (AOR).  Not cool at all.  Everyone means well, but this is about as dumb as it gets on all levels of thinking.

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Off-Beat Fun: Top Five Funniest Political Videos in USA

Offbeat Fun, YouTube

Matt Wilstein

Matt Wilstein

Founder, Gotcha Media

Posted: December 19, 2010 07:15 PM

Huffington Post

The Top 5 Funniest Political Comedy Videos of 2010 (VIDEOS)

Last week, we looked at the top 5 funniest comedy TV shows of 2010 and the best clips from those shows. This week, we turn our attention to funniest political videos of the year, made exclusively for the web.

#1  Obama Caught Lip-Syncing Speech

#2  Presidential Reunion

#3  BP Spills Coffee

#4  PALINCEPTION Parody Trailer

#5  The Tea Party and the Circus — Final Healthcare Protest

This stuff is SO GOOD it actually took us a while to realize this was satire at its finest. There is hope for America–we just need to achieve Electoral Reform so we can put the Onion in the White House.

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Reference: American War and Military Casualty Lists & Statistics

Congressional Research Service
Berto Jongman Recommends...

Phi Beta Iota: The below reference is of human interest, but lacks context.  Three major follow-on studies are needed, if someone can find a Member of Congress willing to ask for them:

1.  Actual number of amputations including number of limbs per person amputated.

2.  Suicides both while in service and post separation or retirement.

3.  Follow-On Gulf War Syndrome and other self-inflicted bio-chemical-radiological wounds and conditions sustained in relation to depleted uranium and other toxic by-products associated with conventional munitions.

There is another point that CRS needs to look into, this one most ably emphasized by MG Robert Scales, as documented the Notes of his 27 September 2010 presentation at the Brookings Institute:

His focus is on the reality that 4% of the “total force,” the engaged infantry, bear 80-81% of the total casualties, but receive less than 1% of the over-all acquisitions and training budget.  He calls this, rather memorably, a “cosmic incongruity.”

Full Source Online (30 Pages)
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Reference: Self-Inflicted Wounds–Understanding Islamic Factions

Monographs
Berto Jongman Recommends...

Very important CTC study on internal frictions within the Salafi movement

Very important CTC study with a number of high profile and experienced contributors. It should be read by anyone dealing with Islamist movements.  The study is a landmark endeavor–a model to be followed–and hopefully will generate additional studies.

Full Source Online (257 pages)

Phi Beta Iota: The US Military Academy (West Point) Counter-Terrorism Center is a national gem, a treasure, vastly more effective at Open Source Intelligence (OSINT) in multiple languages than many of the other elements of the Department of Defense, in part because they appear to have more rigor and a broader (holistic) view instead of the standard cookie cut & paste model that passes for “analysis” elsewhere.

Also Recommended Previously by Berto Jongman:

Journal: Deradicalizing Islamist Extremists, Internal Al Qaeda Critiques

Reference: Al-Qaeda Statements Index

Reference: Towards a Curriculum for the Teaching of Jihadist Ideology

Worth a Look: Jihadis’ Path to Self-Destruction (Book)

Worth a Look: Driven to Death–Psychological Aspects of Suicide Terrorism


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Reference: Remembering Laos and the Hmong

About the Idea, Blog Wisdom, Citizen-Centered
Marcus Aurelius Recommends

Phi Beta Iota: Laos was both an inspiring success story at the operational and tactical levels, and a massive strategic failure in context.  On the one hand, a handful of CIA officers and a very modest amount of money kept entire divisions pinned down or occupied or distracted.  On the other hand, in the words of Ted Shackley's deputy in Laos, we got a lot of people killed with nothing to show for it in the end.  Today this would not be possible to achieve by kinetic means because it would be too easy to first spot with commercial imagery, and then cover all of the air strips with covert hides able to shoot down the light airplanes as they landed.  However, today there are other means of empowering indigenous peoples, centered on Open Spectrum, Open Source Software, and Open Source Intelligence–the Open Tri-Fecta: Information Operations (Advanced).

Click to Enlarge

Comment by Contributing Editor Tom Briggs:

I've never tried to work up the numbers, but I would be very surprised to learn that the ratio of Hmong soldiers to lowland Lao/other mountain tribe soldiers was greater than 50/50.
Having been a Marine, I'm sure you know the old saying that every Marine squad goes into combat with its own photographer.  Merely jealousy, I'm sure, for all the favorable publicity the Marines have had over the years, but not unlike all the favorable publicity the Marines have had (not that they don't deserve it) the Hmong have been the beneficiaries of a similar favorable publicity to the exclusion of the part the lowland Lao and all the other tribal peoples played in the “Secret War.”

See Also:

Review: Cash on Delivery–CIA Special Operations During the Secret War in Laos

Review: Spymaster–My Life in the CIA

Review: Blond Ghost

Review: The World Is Open–How Web Technology Is Revolutionizing Education

Review: Ideas and Integrities–A Spontaneous Autobiographical Disclosure

2006 INFORMATION OPERATIONS: All Information, All Languages, All the Time

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Your Apps Are Watching You…AND Reporting Intimate Details Without Your Consent…

Civil Society, Commerce, Commercial Intelligence, Computer/online security, Corruption, InfoOps (IO), IO Secrets, Mobile, Privacy

Your Apps Are Watching You

A WSJ Investigation finds that iPhone and Android apps are breaching the privacy of smartphone users

By SCOTT THURM and YUKARI IWATANI KANE

Wall Street Journal, Sunday, December 18, 2010

Few devices know more personal details about people than the smartphones in their pockets: phone numbers, current location, often the owner's real name—even a unique ID number that can never be changed or turned off.

These phones don't keep secrets. They are sharing this personal data widely and regularly, a Wall Street Journal investigation has found.

Continue reading “Your Apps Are Watching You…AND Reporting Intimate Details Without Your Consent…”

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ClimateGate Rolling Update CLOSED

03 Economy, 03 Environmental Degradation, 04 Education, 05 Energy, 12 Water, Academia, Collaboration Zones, Earth Intelligence, Ethics, Key Players, Non-Governmental, United Nations & NGOs
ClimateGate Rolling Update
ClimateGate Rolling Update

REMINDER:  Environmental Degradation, not Climate Change, is High-Level Threat #3.  Climate Change is less than 10% of that, and within Climate Change, mercury and sulfer are more important than carbon.  Furthermore, it is not possible to address any one threat without addressing the other nine (e.g. #1 Poverty) with harmonized policies from Agriculture to Water, so the bottom line is that these talks are isolated and worthless.  The world needs a serious global strategy with serious analytics, a commitment to understanding true costs of every product and service, and a commitment to bringing the five billion poor into a prosperous world at peace.  Anything less is a betrayal of the public trust.

19 Dec Top 10 Bad Developments For Global Warming Alarmists (HumanEvents)

Continue reading “ClimateGate Rolling Update CLOSED”

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