Good People, Bad System

07 Other Atrocities, 11 Society, Advanced Cyber/IO, Civil Society, Corruption, Counter-Oppression/Counter-Dictatorship Practices, Government, InfoOps (IO), Reform
Who, Me?

Obama Isn't Trying to ‘Weaken America'

Some conservatives call the president the political equivalent of a suicide bomber: so consumed with hatred that he's willing to blow himself up in order to inflict casualties on a society he loathes.

. . . . . . .

In short, the White House record of more than 200 years shows plenty of bad decisions but no bad men. For all their foibles, every president attempted to rise to the challenges of leadership and never displayed disloyal or treasonous intent.

. . . . . . .

Read full article….

Phi Beta Iota: Both the extreme right and the extreme left persist in demonizing individuals while remaining oblivious to the fact that it is the two-party “system” (remember, there are 65 parties in America, 63 of them disenfranchised) that has with malice and deliberation “sold out” the US public.  The fact is that top-down governance is impossible anyway, it is pathologically dangerous when done by corrupt uninformed parties.  The ONLY thing that can get America back on track is Electoral Reform–yet to our astonishment, Ralph Nader, Ron Paul, Cynthia Mckinney, all others who would seem to have everything to gain by coming together and demanding Electoral Reform in time for 2012, remain silent.  Could they be part of the theater?  The ONLY agile governance in the age of complexity is collective self-governance rich in clarity, diversity, and integrity.  Electoral Reform is the only way to get there.

US Intelligence Lies to “Defer” to General Petraeus

07 Other Atrocities, Corruption, Government, Intelligence (government), Military
Chuck Spinney Recommends...

National Intelligence Estimate Failed to Register Taliban Growth

Deferring to Petraeus

By GARETH PORTER, Counterpunch, 14 February 2011

Despite evidence that the Taliban insurgency had grown significantly in 2010, the U.S. intelligence community failed to revise its estimate for Taliban forces as part of a National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) on Afghanistan in December. That unusual decision was in deference to Gen. David Petraeus, commander of U.S.-NATO forces in Afghanistan, who did not want any official estimate of the insurgency's strength that would contradict his claims of success by Special Operations Forces in reducing the capabilities of the Taliban in 2010.

Read full story…..

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Reference: No More Secrets in a Transparent World

Government, White Papers

New Law and National Security Report – No More Secrets: National Security Strategies for a Transparent World

WASHINGTON, D.C., Feb. 3, 2011—Recent events highlight the difficulty of keeping secrets in today’s increasingly transparent world.  A new report released by the American Bar Association’s Standing Committee on Law and National Security summarizes workshop discussions led by national security experts identifying national security strategies for addressing this challenge.  The group examined the implications of a world without secrets and what today’s secrets involve.

The team that convened included government, private sector, non-profit and academic national security experts. Although members of the working group did not all agree in every aspect of the discussion, there was general consensus that the government and private sector “confront an enormous challenge in trying to learn how to prevail in an increasingly transparent world.”

The report recommends that the government operate with fewer secrets to gain a significant advantage over those who “continue to cling to traditional notions of indefinite information monopoly.”

To schedule an interview, or for more information, please contact ABA Standing Committee staff director Holly McMahon at 202/662-1035 or Holly.McMahon@americanbar.org.

To access the report, go to www.abanet.org/natsecurity or www.nationalstrategy.com

Continue reading “Reference: No More Secrets in a Transparent World”

The Afghanistan War: Tactical Victories, Strategic Stalemate? With Comment by Chuck Spinney

Corruption, Government, Military
DefDog Recommends...

The Afghanistan War: Tactical Victories, Strategic Stalemate?

David Wood, Politics Daily, 13 February 2011

The top commander in Afghanistan, Gen. David Petraeus, likes to describe the tactical gains his troops are making against insurgents. But a stream of independent data and analysis suggests a wide gap between those battlefield gains and the strategic progress needed to convince a skeptical President Obama, Congress and the public to stay with the war effort for at least three more years.

. . . . . . .

But an estimated 7,000 insurgents who had given up and come over to the government later went back to fighting because of poorly managed and underfinanced programs to resettle and reintegrate them, according to a detailed study by the Afghan Analysts Network, an independent nonprofit research organization.

. . . . . . .

On a broader canvas, the United States continues to suffer a negative strategic impact, in part because of its involvement in Afghanistan, according to James Clapper, director of national intelligence.

He testified in Congress on Thursday that al-Qaeda continues to be able to recruit willing new fighters by aggressively exploiting such explosive issues as “the presence of U.S. forces in Afghanistan and Iraq and U.S. support for Israel” all of which “fuel their narrative of a hostile West determined to undermine Islam.”

Comment by Chuck Spinney

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Anti-Corruption in USA–A First Step

Corruption, Government

Watchdog Group Files Formal Complaints To Disbar And Prosecute Clarence Thomas For 20 Years Of False Statements, Financial Conflicts Of Interest, And Using His Decisions On The  Supreme Court To Enrich His Wife

Pressure Building On Department Of Justice To Take Action

Washington, D.C.– February 8, 2011, ProtectOurElections.org filed two formal complaints against Justice Clarence Thomas for falsifying 20 years of financial disclosure statements, engaging in financial conflicts of interests, and using his decisions on the Supreme Court to enrich his wife. The first complaint, filed with the Washington D.C. Bar Disciplinary Committee, seeks Justice Thomas’ disbarment. It has 19 exhibits and can be viewed online.

Read full original press release….

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DARPA as Poster Child for Out of Control Budget

07 Other Atrocities, 10 Security, Corruption, Government, Military, Officers Call, Waste (materials, food, etc)
Chuck Spinney Sounds Off...

From the inventors of McNamara's electronic line (which failed spectacularly in Vietnam) comes the Electronic Coup/Revolution Predictor (EC/RP)!  This is explained below in the attached Wired report.

The EC/RP is merely the latest effort in DARPA's continuing campaign to overthrow Boyd's Law* (i.e., Machines don't fight war wars, people do, and they use their minds) by taking the mind out of the military's Observation – Orientation – Decision – Action (OODA)  loop, and hardwiring what little is left of it with a automated predict-decide-act computer algorithm — the goal, apparently, being to make stupid decisions faster.

This particular DARPA boondoggle is bizarre even by DARPA's tolerant standards for lunacy.  That is because the EC/RP is aimed predicting discontinuities in order to remove uncertainty from the future.

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