The truth at any cost lowers all other costs — curated by former US spy Robert David Steele.
Leadership Failures in the National Security Complex
Current NSA forecast: continued Snowden flurries with no end in sight. No one blames the hardworking NSA employees for the latest series of gaffes: it’s the feckless leadership and the politics that got them there that are responsible for our current difficulties
PDF (4 Pages): Hal on Leadership 6-14
Our “Make It Look Good” Economy Has Failed
When rigged numbers are the basis of our success, we have failed.
The essence of the U.S. economy is make it look good: never mind quality or long-term consequences, just make it look good today, this week, this month, this quarter: make the pink slime look like meat, make the company look profitable, make the low-quality product look good enough to close the sale, make the unemployment rate low enough to justify re-electing the toadies currently in power, make the body count of bad guys look good, and on and on–just makes the numbers look good now, the future will take care of itself.
This is, of course, an attractive lie: the future is a direct consequence of present decisions and actions. It is remarkable how quickly we latch onto the notion that an endless parade of lies, manipulations and deceptions will magically produce a warm and fuzzy future of organic growth fostered by sound investments.
GEN(R) Shinseki is catching flak, perhaps justified, perhaps not, for the deepening VA scandal. Invite your attention to attached as an indicator of what the man is capable of. Only issue I ever had with him was the black beret for everyone matter.
EXTRACT:
I think it ¡s important to point out that the Vision statement begins and ends talking about people. People are central to everything we do ¡n The Army. Institutions don't transform; people do'. Platforms and organizations don't defend the nation; people do. And finally, units don't train; they don't stay ready; they don't grow and develop leadership; they don't s'acrifice and they don't take risks on behalf of the Nation; people do. Without people in the equation, readiness and transformation are little more than academic exercises.
PDF (12 Pasges): (U) GEN Shinseki 34th CSA End of Tour Memo to SECDEF 10Jun03
Continue reading “Marcus Aurelius: CSA General Shinseki End of Tour Memorandum”
China Calls for Security Alliance with Iran, Russia
Editor's Note: Well, it looks like Obama the Peacemaker image took another hit today. China, which has no overseas military bases and no carrier battle groups sailing the seas to defend its customers, considers itself a target and not a threat. Imagine that!
The US “divide and conquer” ploy with the Asia Pivot is turning into Obama's Asia Boomerang. The land of freedom and democracy has turned into the major stimulus on the planet for forming defensive military alliances.
It seems they don't want to buy one of our “Sanctions-R-US” franchises. The Founding Fathers are turning over in their graves.
Maybe it's all a trick. Maybe “they” want to divert China and Russia's capital investment away from peaceful business endeavors and whiz it out the window, following the example of the $2 trillion we blew on the military industrial complex over the last decade with no credible threats on the planet.
Good gosh, what group in America would want to do that when our bridges are falling down and the highway trust fund is almost empty… the list goes on and on. Take a look at the companies that the Bush (43) thugs are all involved with, before and after. They seem to have done well.
Don't be surprised to hear brain dead Congressional candidates screaming about how we must rearm American to protect ourselves from the yellow horde building unsinkable inner tubes to float millions of Chinese secret DNA commandos across the Pacific to invade America.
The think tanks are sharpening their pens and swords to scare Americans into putting what money they have left into their various coffers by going on their Asian Jihad. Americans need to form a security alliance of their own here at home to defend ourselves against “you know who”… Jim W. Dean ]
Politics at its worst — zero credibility.
Obama: ‘I Will Not Stand For' Misconduct At Veterans Affairs Hospitals
Phi Beta Iota: There is no lack of substantive information about what needs to be done, nor is there a lack of integrity among those who actually believe our veterans should receive the best of which America the Beautiful is capable. What we lack in Washington is the integrity to spend on behalf of the humans in our system instead of the financial system commoditizing and disrespecting our humans.
Republicans for Obama Memorandum to the Campaign (August 2008)
CSIS Statement of Principles for Rebuilding Trust in Intelligence Activities
A group convened by the Center for Strategic and International Studies has issued a Statement of Principles for rebuilding trust in intelligence activities. It is signed by the following people:
Continue reading “Berto Jongman: CSIS on Rebuilding Trust in Intelligence — Really….”
This is a very good interview with Matt Taibbi discussing what has happened to the American justice system. One of our myths is that we have the fairest justice system in the world but, like our fantasy that we have the world's freest press, it is a delusion. As with the press we aren't e! ven in the top 25. It is very hard to maintain a healthy democracy if both the government and the people insist upon lying to themselves.
‘It’s Total Moral Surrender”: Matt Taibbi Unloads on Wall Street, Inequality and our Broken Justice System
ELIAS ISQUITH, Assistant Editor – Salon
EXTRACT
Morally, it doesn’t work anymore. You just cannot have a society where people instinctively know that certain people are above the law, because it will create total disrespect for authority among everybody else. And that’s completely corrosive. You need to have people believing in the system to some degree – even if it’s just an illusion, you need to have them believing. And that was … another thing I was trying to get to in this book, the difference between what happened in the Bush years, with the scandals with Adelphi and Enron and Tyco, and what happened now, [when] they just stopped seeing the necessity of keeping up appearances. They didn’t even make a few symbolic prosecutions, and so it leaves the entire public with this glaring statistic that there were no prosecutions and there was massive crime. How does that make anybody else feel? How does it make you feel when you pay a speeding ticket, you can’t write that off, but HSBC can write off its $1.9 b! illion fine for drug trafficking? People start to think about these things, and they start losing their faith in the system and it doesn’t work anymore. It’s funny, because when they talk about income inequality on the campaign trail and in these elections … They always talk about it in this unthreatening, antiseptic way, and it’s just so much more extreme than that. It’s much broader and more disgusting problem than the way they typically present it in our political debate. So that was another thing I was trying to do, was to try to bring out the grotesque nature of the whole thing.
