5.0 out of 5 stars The only primer available in English, February 12, 2012
I am an intelligence professional and I know both the author and the subject of this book intimately. Dr. Lowenthal's book represents the *only* available “primer” on intelligence that can be understood by Presidents, Congressmen, the media, and the public.
Dr. Lowenthal's book focuses on the U.S. Intelligence Community itself–the good, the bad, and the ugly. He is strongest on analysis and the politics of intelligence, somewhat weaker on collection and counterintelligence covert action. There is no other book that meets the need for this particular primer, and so I recommend it with enthusiasm.
If you do not like the book, you definitely should not consider a career in intelligence.
A senior political analyst says numerous prominent US political figures are receiving “substantial fees” from the terrorist Mujahedin-e Khalq Organization (MKO) that is in turn funded by Israel.
“One of the most under-reported political stories of the last year is the devoted advocacy of numerous prominent American political figures on behalf of an Iranian group long formally designated as a Terrorist organization under US law,” Glenn Greenwald wrote on salon.com on Friday.
MKO chief Maryam Rajavi applauds former New York mayor Rudolph Giuliani in a meeting in Paris on January 20, 2012.
. . . . . .
The Christian Science Monitor reported last August that former US four-star generals, intelligence chiefs, governors, and political heavyweights had been paid “tens of thousands of dollars” to call for the US government to take the MKO off the terror list.
Another report by NBC News last Thursday, shed light on the financial status of the MKO by citing two “senior US officials” as saying that the group “is financed, trained and armed by Israel’s secret service,” confirming that it was this terrorist cell which was involved in the string of the assassination of Iranian nuclear scientists.
Phi Beta Iota: The truth at any cost lowers all other costs. Part I is finding the truth. Part II is presenting the truth where it matters — not just the ostensible direct consumers, but the public at large. Part III is creating a climate of integrity such that the public demands that their government attend to the truth.
A disturbing Ministry of Trade report circulating in the Kremlin today is raising serious concerns over the United States plan to shut down significant parts of the Internet on 8 March in a move many Russian experts warn could be a prelude to massive attacks against the growing number of dissidents in that country.
According to this report, The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) will unplug on 8 March the Domain Name System (DNS) servers it set up to replace rogue DNS servers that sent victims to malicious sites. A report on Infoworld said the removal of this temporary fix may affect “a substantial number” of users, as half of Fortune 500 companies and US government agencies are infected with the malware, not to mention tens-of-millions of privately owned American computers.
Phi Beta Iota: When government gets into areas it really does not fully understand, “first do no harm” and the precautionary principle should be foremost in the managing agency head's mind. There is also the matter of the Israeli Mossad and their long history of penetrating governments with malware, ostensibly in pursuit of their own “higher good” never mind the cost to others. Bottom line: A few extraordinary successes aside, no one seems to have a grip on the cyber terrain over which their diplomatic, information, military, and economic communications are running.
I have assembled a catalogue of 85 tools to help you run a more effective social media program for your campaign, organization, or business. Most of these are free. A lot are for Twitter. Many help you leverage Facebook and other social media too. Some help you find the best content to share via social media.
Some of these tools are more useful than others. But I expect you will disagree over which are the most and least useful. That is why I have included such a wide range of tools.
You will find tools for measuring, monitoring, and engaging your social media audience.
If you know of more tools worth adding to this list, I encourage you to post them in the comments.
Have fun exploring these. There are some real gems in here.
Full list, links, and descriptions below the line.
“Or Your Lying Eyes…” Truth and Fiction in the News Business
Alex Cockburn
Counterpunch, Weekend Edition February 10-12, 2012
If you want a sense of what could well lie in store for Syria, go no further than Anthony Shadid’s report from Libya in the New York Times for February 9. Shadid, a good reporter, describes a dismembered country, rent by banditry.
EXTRACT:
As Byrne reported,
“Of the three main sources for all data on numbers of protesters killed and numbers of people attending demonstrations – the pillars of the narrative – all are part of the ‘regime change’ alliance. The Syrian Observatory of Human Rights, in particular, is reportedly funded through a Dubai-based fund with pooled (and therefore deniable) Western-Gulf money (Saudi Arabia alone has, according to Elliot Abrams allocated US$130 billion to ‘palliate the masses’ of the Arab Spring).
What appears to be a nondescript British-based organization, the Observatory has been pivotal in sustaining the narrative of the mass killing of thousands of peaceful protesters using inflated figures, ‘facts’, and often exaggerated claims of ‘massacres’ and even recently ‘genocide’.”
By now, most readers have probably heard of the critical report issued on Afghanistan by a serving Army Lt Colonel. For those readers who have not seen it, this email forwards it without commentary.
In the attached 84 page report (pdf), Lt Colonel Daniel Davis (US Army) opens with the following charge:
“Senior ranking US military leaders have so distorted the truth when communicating with the US Congress and American people in regards to conditions on the ground in Afghanistan that the truth has become unrecognizable. This deception has damaged America’s credibility among both our allies and enemies, severely limiting our ability to reach a political solution to the war in Afghanistan. It has likely cost American taxpayers hundreds of billions of dollars Congress might not otherwise have appropriated had it known the truth, and our senior leaders’ behavior has almost certainly extended the duration of this war. The single greatest penalty our Nation has suffered, however, has been that we have lost the blood, limbs and lives of tens of thousands of American Service Members with little to no gain to our country as a consequence of this deception.”
The remainder of this unclassified report, explains why he holds this view (he has also submitted a classified version to his chain of command and to Congress). The report has gotten wide publicity, and its unclassified form has was been released by the New York Times and Rolling Stone. This report was downloaded from the Rolling Stone web site. A good summary of the news coverage of the Davis Report can be found here.<
Phi Beta Iota: We have been focusing on the lack of integrity in government — and particularly within the national security world (diplomatic, information, military, economic – DIME) for over a decade. INTEGRITY is everything. Not having intelligence and integrity is like constantly putting sand in the gears of a very complex machine. It may enrich the repairman (contractors) but it kills the Republic and that for which the Republic stands – the Constitution and the common welfare (Preamble to the Constitution). It merits mention that government intelligence and counterintelligence are required to embrace a larger and more holistic responsibility in part because the media has become totally corrupt — from Bloomberg to Fox to the Washington Post, they are generally publishing undiluted crap that could as easily be a press release from the party being reported on. When they do report usefully (e.g. Top Secret America) they water it down by avoiding the “true cost” economics and the personal accountability issues that really matter. For this reason, we view the new craft of intelligence, and the much expanded role of intelligence within government, as the seed crystal for a national renaissance.
An article like this poses the question – who is really insane, psychiatrists or the people they treat? When readers finish this article, they may vote for the former.
“In a damning analysis of an upcoming revision of the influential Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM), psychologists, psychiatrists and mental health experts said its new categories and “tick-box” diagnosis systems were at best “silly” and at worst “worrying and dangerous.” Some diagnoses – for conditions like “oppositional defiant disorder” and “apathy syndrome” – risk devaluing the seriousness of mental illness and medicalising behaviors most people would consider normal or just mildly eccentric, the experts said. At the other end of the spectrum, the new DSM, due out next year, could give medical diagnoses for serial rapists and sex abusers – under labels like “paraphilic coercive disorder” – and may allow offenders to escape prison by providing what could be seen as an excuse for their behavior, they added.
