The truth at any cost lowers all other costs — curated by former US spy Robert David Steele.
Computer hackers have repeatedly breached the systems of the company that runs the Nasdaq stock exchange in New York but did not penetrate the part of the system that handles trades, according to several law enforcement officials.
YOU, TOO, CAN BE A CONGRESSPERSON
by Tom Atlee
Why would you want to become one? Here are four very enticing reasons:
The alternative approach:
* You might have to advocate policies that would be hard on yourself, your constituents or your supporters — even temporarily. You might become unpopular. You might get assassinated or your plane might develop unexplained engine trouble and crash. You might even not get re-elected!
* You would actually have to face reality, get the facts, learn about complicated stuff like how complex systems work. (It's really unfortunate, but most of our thorny problems are all tangled up with complex systems that are tangled up with other problems, too. Yuck!!)
* You would have to listen to and work with people who see things differently from you. After all, they may know something that's important to take into consideration. That could be really unpleasant and take you far afield from your party line, out in the political boonies where the real danger lies.
* You just wouldn't get the same adrenaline rush you get when you stick with oversimplifications, grandstanding, being loved by your supporters, and launching juicy attacks on your enemies. There just aren't as many ego-strokes or perks available for working with others to deeply understand things and come up with what makes sense for the long haul.
Open Source Intelligence (OSINT) is not worth a doctorate. What is worth a doctorate is the ability to meld intelligence and policy-making into a coherent ethical whole. Reflexive practice and comprehensive design are also worth PhDs, both are integrated in principle into the PhD central to the new holistic public policy PhD. Here is one vision for greating a new reflexive practice that allows political and civil service professionals to be both ethical and effective.
Reference: Building a Global Intelligence Web
Journal: Politics & Intelligence–Partners Only When Integrity is Central to Both
Journal: Reflections on Integrity [Many Links]
If you were looking for PhD Author Dissects Intelligence Reformer Robert Steele, that is here.
The Howling Wilderness of Carbon Credits
FEB 5 2011, 2:30 PM ET
By Chuck Spinney
One of central causes of the financial meltdown was the lack of transparency in the complex derivatives, like bundled mortgages and credit default swaps. Advocates of global warming would have us to believe that they can construct a transparent carbon emissions trading scheme that will provide market incentives to reduce the emission of greenhouse gases.
At the center of this trading scheme is the idea of a carbon credit, which is a generic term for any tradable certificate or permit representing the right to emit one ton of carbon or carbon dioxide equivalent. Think of a carbon credit as property in a free market economy — Ayn Rand, meet Global Warming.
Phi Beta Iota: We have from the beginning denounced carbon credits as a financial scam.
Egypt: Exchanging a Dictator for a Torturer
By James Ridgeway, Mother Jones, Thu Feb. 3, 2011 8:30 AM PST
As for Suleiman, he looks to be a nasty piece of work.
Egyptian Protests Grounded in Decades of Struggle; Portend Regional Transformation
Egypt is throbbing with resistance. Cairo is cloven between the forces of revolution and those of counterrevolution. Hundreds of thousands of people – on Tuesday, February 1, well over a million – have been streaming each day into Tahrir Square, the largest plaza in the Arab world, located in the heart of downtown Cairo. Army tanks line the streets, helicopters and F16s buzz overhead, and pro-Mubarak demonstrators, many of them hired thugs, bloodied thousands of protesters yesterday in Tahrir and elsewhere. Yet the people keep pushing for Egyptian dictator Hosni Mubarak's unconditional ouster, and not just in Cairo. Alexandria has been convulsed, while Suez, a small city abutting the Suez Canal, has been riven with some of the fiercest street battles between the police and protesters, while workers there have gone on strike, demanding that Mubarak step down from his palace in Heliopolis.
Phi Beta Iota: The US appears naive and uninformed at this time. This would have a much better outcome if there were a strategic game plan for pulling US forces out of the region, cutting all US military assistance to the region, and pushing Israel out of the US policy process while redirecting 50% of existing US assistance toward waging peace, the other 50% toward deficit reduction. The sooner the US can achieve intelligence with integrity, the better for all.
See Also:
Continue reading “Whither Egypt – and its Torturer Vice President”
The Economist on Democracy in America
I'M HAVING trouble writing about the GOP effort to reach a compromise over whether to cut $100 billion out of the 2011 budget, or just $50-60 billion. My problem is that I can't really write about the advantages or disadvantages of one or another version of the cuts when the entire enterprise appears completely senseless to me.
. . . . . . .
That still wouldn't have anything to do with what the US economy needs over the next year or two. But at least it would make sense as a long-term strategy. What the GOP is doing now is frenziedly cutting often worthwhile small programmes because they can't face the political consequences of taking on entitlements and defence or proposing tax hikes, and it's very hard for me to take the charade seriously.
Phi Beta Iota: Below the line is a most intriguing speculative analytic comment on what role Saudi Arabia may have played, and the intersection between religion, despots, military, and the public.
