Robert David Steele will be visiting Oslo 17-18 April for several private appointments, and then visit Copenhagen 19-21 April, where he has been invited to lecture on Open Source Intelligence (OSINT) to military, police, and national intelligence officers.
By Jan H. Kalvik, Editor-in-Chief
Defence and Intelligence Norway
Read original story online — safety copy below the fold.
In Oslo he will be addressing the need for a Nordic Council Intelligence Centre and Network that is multinational and multi-agency, along with his continued emphasis on the importance of redirecting national intelligence toward complete independence from foreign influences.
– I will focus on using decision-support to create a new model for global development that leverages Open Source Everything Engineering (OSEE) to achieve the Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) within a decade at a fraction of the cost that is estimated – and unachievable – with the dysfunctional industrial-donor model now used by the United Nations (UN) and its members.
Steele, introduced to our readers on 1 April 2016, was the original champion in the USA – in 1988 – of focusing on emerging non-state threats and using national intelligence to justify investments in peaceful preventive measures. In 2002 he predicted the illegal immigrant break-out that is now threatening Nordic and European stability, the key graphic from his second of over ten books, The New Craft of Intelligence: Personal, Public, & Political is here online.
– No one wanted to listen to me in the 1980’s and 1990’s because my ideas threatened a multi-trillion dollar military-intelligence-industrial complex skilled at profiting from war and not at all competent at waging peace.
Steele likes to point out two things:
“Peace is more profitable than war, but the profit is spread among all the people, not just concentrated among a few banks and corporations. Until the public is educated to this point, governments will continue to be corrupted by banks and over-invest the public treasury in war for the wrong reasons.”
“For one third of what we all spend on war, it is possible to completely resolve, in less than a decade, all of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) as set forth by the United Nations (UN). If we leverage Open Source Everything Engineering (OSEE) and stop subsidizing the 40-odd dictators that are ‘best pals” of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), we can do this even faster for much less money.”
In support of the above point, here is a graphic from Medard Gabel, co-creator with Buckminster Fuller of the analog World Game, and co-creator with Steele of a concept for a digital Global (Serious) Game that shows how we spend $1.3 trillion a year on war, when $228 billion a year could resolve all outstanding SDG goals. The actual costs will change but the comparison is clear – we spend vastly more on war, nothing on peace, peace is cheaper and ultimately more profitable because it allows the five billion poor to begin creating wealth instead of fighting each day for life.
I asked Steele to discuss his vision for a Nordic Intelligence Centre – its purposes, its organization, its potential political, economic, and social benefits to Norwegian citizens:
Let me say first that I consider the craft of intelligence – the creation of decision-support for decision-makers in the public interest – to be the most honorable and important profession in the world. Done right, it is the most effective contributor to peace and prosperity because it helps political, diplomatic, economic, and military leaders achieve the greatest good at the lowest cost in the shortest possible time, while it systematically eradicates corruption and waste.
A Nordic Intelligence Center – perhaps based in Copenhagen for Nordic centrality and greater proximity to the power centres of Europe – would in my view have three purposes:
First, to assure the Nordic publics that their governments are making the best possible diplomatic, economic, military, and informational investments toward the assurance of Nordic peace and prosperity far into the future. This must include a rejection of existing Western industrial practices that are harming humanity and destroying the Earth – roughly 50% of every dollar we spend today is waste, whether in agriculture or energy or health or housing or security or water.
Second, to develop – first in the Nordic region and then for the rest of the world – the 21st Century Open Source Everything Engineering (OSEE) alternative within every policy and investment domain. OSEE costs one tenth of the traditional Western approach, while also eliminating all of the true costs in wasted water and fuel, created toxins, child labor, and other ills that are not accounted for today. Once exported, this new model stops illegal immigration, ends crime, prevents infectious disease, and neutralizes all external threats.
Third, to end the mis-direction of Nordic policy and North Atlantic Treaty (NATO) operations by foreign mis-representation whether from Russia or the Americans or anyone else including the Arab countries and Israel. The invasion of Iraq was agreed to on the basis of 935 now-documented lies. Many people – including the Dixie Chicks – knew these were lies at the time, but the corporate media – including the European media – followed the official American narrative, and European officials including Nordic officials did not have the independent intelligence capability needed to counter-balance misinformation. The Americans – with European complicity – have created a swath of destruction from Central Asia through the Middle East and North Africa down to Western Africa. We need a very strong counterintelligence capability able to stop elective wars and predatory legalized crime by banks and corporations, and to detect, challenge, and neutralize false flag state-sponsored terrorism and the official misinformation that seem to accompany proposals for war and economic sanctions.
Steele’s future-oriented ideas for achieving global peace and prosperity are outlined in a number of documents free online including a memorandum to the Vice President of the United States proposing an Open Source (Technologies) Agency at a cost of $2 billion a year.
Noticing a possible contradiction – on the one hand, he wants the Nordics to take the lead in creating first a Nordic and then a UN Open-Source Decision-Support Information Network (UNODIN) that challenges the US military-industrial-intelligence complex, while on the other hand he believes the Americans will pay for this challenge if asked to do so, I asked for elaboration.
Whether the Americans pay for this or not, I believe the Nordics have no alternative in the face of massive illegal immigration that will bring with it poverty, infectious disease, crime including trade in women and children, and environmental degradation. The world is now back in the 1920’s where the wealthy discovered that public health was necessary to keep the poor from killing the rich indirectly – with infectious disease. I knew what needed to be done 25 years ago – this is a second chance for those who might wish to listen as they see the world collapsing around them. Illegal immigrants are not a threat – the conditions we in the West are facilitating that create illegal refugees – millions of them – are the threat.
A non-violent political revolution is occurring in the USA today. The American public is now acutely aware of how badly it has been served by the US political establishment, a two-party tyranny that blocks over 60% of the eligible voters from meaningful participation. Our leaders are good people trapped in a bad system. Joe Biden in particular is for me representative of the old world gentleman politician, a decent human being swept up in corporate and political party practices that are ultimately criminal in their betrayal of the public trust. I have spent 25 years getting the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) to agree to the value proposition – $2 billion to $3 billion a year for an Open Source (Technologies) Agency will ultimately eliminate war, make peace and prosperity the default condition world-wide, and in passing allow the elimination of 50% of the US Government budget now spent on waste and legalized crime including fracking, geo-engineering, and Genetically-Modified Organisms (GMO). My challenge now – the Nordic governments can help – is to get the memo actually placed before Joe Biden by his myopic resistant staff.
What we are missing is the seed crystal – the public conversation that cannot be ignored. I admire the Nordics. Among the 66+ governments I have dealt with over the past quarter century, the Nordics have consistently impressed me as the most likely to see that evidence-based policy is good for everyone. I humbly challenge the Nordics to lead this conversation within NATO, where a Norwegian is the Secretary-General, and the UN, where a Dane is President of the UN General Assembly.
The Americans do what they do because they can. They are also practical. Make the Open Source (Technologies) Agency, and an evidence-based open-source Nordic, NATO, and UN intelligence system, the alternative that cannot be ignored. In my view, the Nordics have everything to gain, and nothing meaningful to lose, by rising to this challenge. With or without American money, this needs to be built.
I could not resist a final challenge with respect to Russia. I asked him to put the Russian threat to Norway in his context and to explain why the Nordics, and Sweden in particular, should re-evaluate how they evaluate “existential” threats to national sovereignty, security, and prosperity.
I have to laugh when I see the inflated threat estimates having to do with Russia. I am reminded of the story of the Mexican president refusing to declare Cuba a threat to Mexican national security when asked to do so by an American president. Asked to give a reason, the Mexican president is reported to have said, “Because if I declared Cuba to be a threat to our national security, forty million Mexicans would die laughing.”
When I think of Russia I remind myself that it was Germany that invaded Denmark and Norway, not Russia; it was also Germany that invaded Russia. I also remind myself that war is made possible by bankers. It was European and US bankers all too willing to advance Hitler the money, which made WWII possible. Dishonest bankers, not Russians, are the prime enemy.
I also think very carefully about how policy makers are being influenced by intelligence that is incomplete and often terribly wrong. Any perspective or policy that is rooted in financial influence or incorrect information from the USA is certain to require independent consideration if the public trust is to be honored. The US emphasis on Russia as a threat has led to a national military strategy that I have labeled as nothing more than “dishonest platitudes.” The propaganda that the US Atlantic Council publishes is drafted by people engaged in creating a false reality for the financial benefit of a few. I hope Nordic intelligence will in the future be more capable of determining the truth about the destabilizing regime change and covert action operations of the US Government (USG) and George Soros, among others, against the Russian economy, against Eastern European countries (seeking to install corrupt fascists in place of corrupt communists), and against Libya – backing the French subversion motivated by oil – and Syria, another oil and natural gas play with Saudi Arabia seeking to export Wahhabism into Syria and Israel eager to further Balkanize the region without regard to the illegal refugee problems it creates for Europe.
Russia’s military, while emergent, is largely hollow. Russia is still in recovery from a massive economic collapse engineered by the Americans including George Soros. I have to agree with Vladimir Putin when he points out that the US has over 1,000 military bases around the world and is viewed as an occupying force in many places including Germany, while Russia has just two or three military bases outside of Russia. In my view, the Nordics needs to do a complete re-appraisal of their relationship with the Americans, and they need to start with a counter-intelligence survey that documents how much money each intelligence service, each military element, each politician, each banker, is getting from American sources – remember that the US philanthropic organizations – the Ford and Rockefeller Foundations and others – are part of the American system of manipulation. Itemize the US dollars coming into the Norwegian system, and ask the simple question: “it the true cost of all this US money the sacrifice of our own integrity?”
I support ruthless counterintelligence against all internal and external threats to national sovereignty and security, but would respectfully observe that inviting the Americans to occupy Norway is a legitimate justification for Russian intelligence to consider unilateral and covert intelligence operations within Norway.
The Arctic – the North – is one half of the development challenge facing Norway along with Canada, Denmark, Iceland, Russia, and others with legitimate claims there. The other half is the South, where heat, water scarcity, ethnic conflict, and corruption are among the many issues driving illegal immigrants from South to North.
I humbly suggest that Norway needs to abandon the American paradigm that says that the military, money, and technology are the solution to everything, and instead focus on how intelligence (decision-support) can leverage Open Source Everything Engineering (OSEE) to create a peace paradigm rooted in prosperity for everyone. This will allow Norway to lead in the North as the vast undeveloped lands become habitable and viable as new economies; and in the South, where we need to end our support for all dictators and start focusing on public diplomacy and citizen-centered commerce. I believe the de-militarization of the North should be diplomatic priority.
In my view, the highest priority for any government should be to place its own house in order and then create a stabilizing approach to international relations that keeps all those illegal immigrants happy at home – it is in our interest to create peace and prosperity for all, it is in our interest to stop doing things that destabilize the world.
Russia is not a threat. Lies about Russia are the threat. What we are doing to our own health and the Earth is the threat. It’s time we achieved intelligence with integrity. I hold the Nordics in extremely high regard and believe they can lead us toward this new positive and constructive model of development based on holistic analytics, true cost economics, and Open Source Everything Engineering (OSEE).
Among his works relevant to this discussion, in addition to the recent papers free online, are his presentation in Sweden in December 2004, “Information Peacekeeping: A Nobel Objective” and as a Secretary of State Open Forum Speaker at the US Department of State, “The New Craft of Intelligence: How ‘State’ Should Lead.” His complete works are free online at his personal website.
