Natalie, the gems girl, says, “Prostitution and pimping—it’s never going to stop. Tricks—they should start from there. If no one’s buying girls, then the pimps can’t make money.” That, in fact, is exactly the theory behind the Sex Purchase Law in Sweden. As of 1999, johns are punished by up to six months’ imprisonment, traffickers are locked up for 2-to-10-year hits, and prostitutes are offered medical care, education, and housing. As a result, prostitution has been reduced by 50 percent in Sweden, and the purchase of sex, which is understood to be a human-rights abuse, has decreased by 75 percent. In contrast, Europol studies show, nations such as Holland and Australia, where prostitution has been legalized, have become lucrative, low-risk magnets for international sex-slave drivers and organized crime.
Phi Beta Iota: Immediately obvious are the immediate focus on Iraq, Iran, Somalia, and Yemen. No big picture focus on preventive peace from the sea here. The emergent focus is on Central Asia (far from the sea) and the Indian Ocean area. One wonders if the time has come to tell the Navy to focus on defending the USA, not trying to intervene everywhere. Finally, the enduring languages are the usual suspects, but (we do not make this stuff up) we observe that there is no such thing as a Saigon Vietnamese dialect/language. Could they mean Ho Chi Minh (VS/QNS)?
Phi Beta Iota: We consider the attacks on Tripoli to be outrageously illegal and immoral by every standard. There is every reason for the non-NATO world to bring war crime charges against every participating NATO nation.
Peacekeepers from the African Union Mission to Somalia (AMISOM) park their tanks near the main Bakara market during fighting between Somalia government soldiers and Islamist insurgents in the capital Mogadishu, on May 23. Feisal Omar/Reuters
Phi Beta Iota: As with all regional organizations including security organizations such as NATO, the AU lacks a multinational, multiagency, multidisciplinary, multidomain information-sharing and sense-making (M4IS2) capability. Until they have one, they will remain at the mercy of predatory states and corporations.
Robert M. Gates is one of those people the Beltway Consensus refers to as a “serious adult”: not overtly partisan, measured in his pronouncements, possessed of actual knowledge about the job he has been charged to do. The adulation he has received is certainly understandable if we grade on a curve; his predecessor, Donald Rumsfeld, established an Olympic record for petty vanity, nasty abrasiveness, and disastrous professional judgment. Such a collective sigh of relief greeted Rumsfeld's departure that his successor was bound to shine in comparison.
But what of Gates's record on his own merits? He is given to making such comments as, “In my opinion, any future defense secretary who advises the President to again send a big American land army into Asia or into the Middle East or Africa should ‘have his head examined,' as General MacArthur so delicately put it.” A normal person would infer that he is opposed to the types of military intervention that have contributed significantly to a near-bankruptcy of the country. Yet in practice he has taken concrete measures to protract the very problem he professes to deplore.
President Obama appears to have no interest in the U.S. Intelligence Community (IC) as a source of accurate information for decision making and policy formulation. John Brennan, his counter-terrorism chief and principal advisor on intelligence issues routinely circumvents the IC when the administration needs strategic intelligence to guide its national security deliberations. During the last two years decision making and policy formulation in the White House (WH) has been informed by having trusted outside advisors develop strategic papers on the subjects under discussion. Bruce Riedel of the Brookings (retired CIA) was called in twice to produce strategic studies of Afghanistan and the al Qaeda Movement. These studies informed WH discussion of strategy and policy including determining if a surge strategy would be successful in Afghanistan. Last August the WH asked for another study on the Magherb that warned of social unrest and the potential of upheaval. Although some CIA analysts did participate in these studies, the fact is that the ODNI, the National Intelligence Council, and CIA did not participate as institutions. The papers produced were not vetted by IC nor did the DNI appear to participate in any of the strategy sessions that the President chaired in the WH.
Intelligence support to military operations (SMO) does appear to have the attention of the WH. Indeed in a recent article in Washington Post, “Personalities over Structures in the Intelligence Community?” Walter Pincus reviewed the changes that were to occur within the National Security Establishment with the retirement of SecDef Bob Gates. Typical of the Post, Pincus did not engage in any analysis and did not address one of the most significant changes, the appointment of Michael Vickers to the post of Under Secretary of Defense for Intelligence.
Vickers spent ten years in the U.S. Army Special Forces (1973-1983) and then migrated to a three year tour (1983-1986) at CIA where he directed the transfer of arms and other supplies to the Pashtun Tribes then fighting the Soviet Union in Afghanistan. He then resigned from CIA to follow an academic path that eventually led to a doctorate in political science and from he moved into a prestigious think tank. In 2007 he was appointed Assistant Secretary of Defense for Special Operations and Low Intensity Conflict.
Although his credentials in the intelligence field are remarkably thin and there is little evidence that he really understands irregular warfare, Vickers represents the growing movement to cast intelligence functions as principally SMO. The reported move of General David Petreaus to be the next director of CIA and the move of his predecessor Leon Panetta to be secretary of defense reinforces this conclusion. So does recent actions by General James Clapper (USAF ret.) who as DNI is also moving to make SMO the central function of U.S. Intelligence. It would appear that even CIA is going to be expected to function in support of military operations.
Phi Beta Iota: Sherman Kent is assuredly turning in his grave. Not only has the current “clerkship” of the US IC set US intelligence back a half century (while spending so much money for no results that they are now a target for cuts), but the “clerkship” of US IC has also wasted a full 20 years during which they had an opportunity to create a Smart Nation and establish multinational information-sharing and sense-making as a foundation for creating a prosperous world at peace. We also note with interest the White House preference for “intelligence” from sources other than the US IC. The US IC is, in one word, corrupt. It lacks integrity.
So…here's what I wrote. It's missing a handy chart where it depicts the average Wells employee's hourly salary vs. the CEO's salary, but you get the gist.
Full disclosure, I had been working here for a few months and this was to be my last week. I wouldn't recommend anyone else do this, but I gotta admit, it felt damn good and maybe someone will step up and do something about it.
Good Morning All,
Last week a friend of mine was fired for sending an inappropriate email to pretty much the whole building. Despite the fact that it was harmless, accidental, and largely ignored message, she will now join the ranks of the unemployed. If she is your average unemployed Oregonian she will remain unemployed for at least 18 months and when/if she gets rehired somewhere it will be for less money than she was making here.
Now my friend was definitely in the wrong, and I’m not writing this email to argue her situation. However, in an attempt to hold our company to a similar standard consider the following:
We work for one of the largest financial institutions in the world, we are essential to its operations, yet economic security is completely at the mercy of its senior executives. They are squeezing our salaries, reducing our benefits, and lobbying our politicians to make it harder for us to improve our financial positions despite our contributions to Wells Fargo’s successes. It means more profits for them, but less choice, less freedom and more importantly, less money for us.
In 2010, our CEO, John G. Stumpf received $18,973,722 in total compensation. By comparison, the median worker made $33,190 in 2010. John G. Stumpf made 571 times the median worker's pay.
Phi Beta Iota: We note with interest that this executive is only 220th on the Forbes executive pay rankings. We hold the corporations blameless in one sense: they get to do this because the US Government has lost its integrity and has not been in the business of the public for decades, Grover Cleveland may have been the last truly honest holistic President. What that says about the American public is for reflection. At the same time, we point to William Greider's book Come Home, America: The Rise and Fall (and Redeeming Promise) of Our Country in which he discusses the documentations on how the financial industry (Mr. Stumpf's industry) inflated by 17 times base value while the “real” asset-based economy inflated by five times. This means that Mr. Stumpf and his colleagues cheated the US and global customers by 12 times….and for this, the government bails them out and nobody goes to jail. See also Matt Taibbi's Griftopia–Bubble Machines, Vampire Squids, and the Long Con That Is Breaking America.
Phi Beta Iota: There is a contest of personalities going on, in which Army officers and camp followers without integrity (Alexander, Burgess, Long) are winning out over Navy officers with integrity (McConnell, Blair, Mullen). The militarization of intelligence is Clapper's pathetically counter-productive technocratic dive over the cliff. What Obama has done is demonstrate that he is incapable of selecting subordinates who can deliver substance. He prefers unethical sychophants. His Administration lacks intelligence.
