I was on MSNBC talking about the schism among Democrats regarding Arizona’s new immigration law and the Justice Department’s response. Obama is worried about his plummeting poll numbers among Hispanics (down 12 points this year), while Arizona Congressional Democrats are worried about being voted out of office. But nobody is talking about pot.
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When asked about it by Dylan Ratigan, I said that everyone discussing the “immigration problem” was ignoring the elephant in the middle of the room: marijuana prohibition. It’s channeling millions in drug money into the Mexican cartels, and represents 60% of all cartel profits. That money gets used to finance violence not only at the border but in over 200 cities across the United States where they currently have a presence — up from 100 cities three years earlier.
From the Onion, dated (2009) but achieving new momentum as Americans question their government more and more.
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From TED Global 2010, a candid discussion with the founder of WikiLeaks who was also scheduled as a keynote speaker at Hackers on Planet Earth (HOPE) 2010 but was replaced by his colleague due to “possible conflict.”
About this talk
The controversial website WikiLeaks collects and posts highly classified documents and video. Founder Julian Assange, who's reportedly being sought for questioning by US authorities, talks to TED's Chris Anderson about how the site operates, what it has accomplished — and what drives him. The interview includes graphic footage of a recent US airstrike in Baghdad.
About Julian Assange
Internet activist Julian Assange serves as spokesperson for WikiLeaks, a controversial, volunteer-driven website that publishes and comments on leaked documents alleging government and… Full bio and more links
BAGHDAD — An American soldier in Iraq who was arrested on charges of leaking a video of a deadly American helicopter attack here in 2007 has also been charged with downloading more than 150,000 highly classified diplomatic cables that could, if made public, reveal the inner workings of American embassies around the world, the military here announced Tuesday.
Washington Post Foreign Service
Wednesday, July 7, 2010
BAGHDAD — The military said Tuesday that it has charged an Army intelligence analyst in connection with the leak of a controversial video and the downloading and transfer of classified State Department cables, in a case that is likely to further deter would-be whistleblowers.
Click on headlines to read each full story.
Phi Beta Iota: PFC Manning swore an oath to defend the Constitutions, not the chain of command and not the secrecy of immoral, illegal, and unaffordable policies that are funded by the U.S. taxpayer and done “in our name” but not at all in our interest. Sunshine is the best disinfectant.
His charge sheet rests on “discrediting the Armed Forces” which is laughable–it is the behavior of our leaders that is a discredit to all of America; and on subverting “good order and discipline.” His behavior in revealing the webs of deceit and incompetence that characterize our military, our “diplomats,” and our spies is precisely what America needs in order to re-establish good order and discipline in harmony with our Constitution.
America needs MORE leaks, MORE “misbehavior,” because we now suffer a “system” that is so far removed from the Founding Fathers' vision, and so deeply divorced from the principles enshrined in our Constitution, that we must, without question, consider PFC Manning to be a “just man” whose best place in a time of injustice is to be in jail as an example to us all. BRAVO ZULU for courage and intelligence in the face of the enemy–he is us. If the lawyer for the defense has any integrity at all, this will be a public jury trial and the PFC will walk free, as he should. It's time to trash this pathological system and get back to the basics of freedom and a foreign policy of commerce and peace.
Civil Disobedience (Resistance to Civil Government) is an essay by Henry David Thoreau that was first published in 1849. It argues that people should not permit governments to overrule or atrophy their consciences, and that people have a duty to avoid allowing such acquiescence to enable the government to make them the agents of injustice. Thoreau was motivated in part by his disgust with slavery and the Mexican-American War.
Resistance also served as part of Thoreau's metaphor which compared the government to a machine, and said that when the machine was working injustice it was the duty of conscientious citizens to be “a counter friction” (i.e., a resistance) “to stop the machine”.
The alleged Russian spy ring is a pleasant summer distraction (Anna Chapman — call your agent!) and a wonderful opportunity to use the phrase femme fatale. But if you want to ponder a 21st-century intelligence puzzle this July 4 weekend, turn your attention to cyber-espionage — where our adversaries can steal in a few seconds what it took an old-fashioned spy network years to collect.
First, though, let's think about what the Russian “illegals” were up to in their suburban spy nests. U.S. intelligence officials think it's partly that the Russians just love running illegal networks. This has been part of their tradecraft since the 1920s, and it enabled many of their most brilliant operations, from Rudolf Abel to Julius and Ethel Rosenberg. The FBI finds it hard to break its cultural habits, and so does Russia's intelligence service, the SVR.
1. The “fact of” PDB distribution is well known; Administrations influence who is on the distro list.
2. Of the principals showcased here, some are (at least sort of) competent patriotic and some…well…
3. This article is, perhaps unknowingly, deceptive in that it creates an impression that USG is postured to continue mission 24/7 from wherever necessary. Not necessarily so. There is a long established and openly acknowledged “Continuity of Operations” (COOP) program and a related personnel program, “telework,” that are essentially broken — misunderstood and pitifully under-resourced. At least within DoD, the COOP programs are inextricably trapped in Cold War mentalities where the principal threat was nuclear strikes on key command and control nodes. The concept was that a very small and elite segment of the workforce evacuated to predesignated facilities to sustain a very small set of “mission essential functions” for a relatively short period (say less than 30 days) after which the survivors emerge from their smoking holes and restart the world. That mindset endures. COOP and the people running it have not been able to transition to the idea that contingencies now exist that require USG to sustain a much greater fraction (say; 90%) of normal day to day functions for much longer periods (say 270 cumulative days over an 18-24 month period) and do it from distributed locations in order to intentionally avoid concentrating the workforce. Inflexible security policies retard achievement of that standard as does misconstruction of “telework,” which is cast as a personnel benefit program, intended as a reward for a picked set of supposed high performing employees, and hampered by traditional information security strictures, computer security strictures, and pervasive management concerns about how to intensively manage and supervise teleworkers in order to ensure that they do not defraud the government. Some of the policy documents governing telework are mind-boggling garbage. Further, the overriding intent is that the teleworking employee financially support telework, particularly internet access back to the employing agency and in many cases basic hardware and software.)
Headlights approach on an empty road. A government agent steps out of an armored SUV, carrying a locked, black satchel.
“Here's the bag,” the agent says, to the intelligence official. “Here's the key.”
The key turns, and out slides a brown leather binder, gold-stamped TOP SECRET. The President's Daily Brief, perhaps the most secret book on Earth.
The PDB handoff happens in the dead of every night. The book distills the nation's greatest threats, intelligence trends and concerns, and is written by a team at CIA headquarters.
Phi Beta Iota: The President's Daily Brief (PDB) costs $75 billion a year to produce, and provides the President and senior commanders with “at best” 4% of what he needs to know. The US Intelligence Community lacks a strategic analytic model and does nothing of consequence for Cabinet Secretaries, regional and functional Assistant Secretaries, or individual action officers (e.g. the one deep Energy officer responsible for proliferation). Madeline Albright it right when she described herself and others as “gerbils on a wheel.”
