AUSTIN – University of Texas junior Eric Gladstone was sitting in his 500-student organic chemistry class Tuesday morning when his cellphone buzzed with a text message – an urgent warning that a gunman was loose on campus.
Looking around, he noticed others glancing at their cellphones and registering the same worry he was feeling.
The warning sent throughout campus by administrators was prompted by reports that a young man, clad in black, wearing a ski mask and wielding a semiautomatic AK-47, had fired shots as he entered the southern edge of campus. The gunman, 19-year-old UT student Colton Tooley, fatally shot himself after police chased him into a library. No one else was injured.
Within 15 minutes of the first police calls, sirens, e-mails, the UT website and public address systems blared the warnings, telling more than 55,000 students, faculty and staff members that the campus was in lockdown and urging everyone to stay behind locked doors. Meanwhile, law enforcement from the university, city and state swarmed to the site.
UT's efficient alarm system – practiced and coordinated by law enforcement only weeks before – was credited by local and national experts with probably sparing the campus from injuries and death.
Phi Beta Iota: ATTABOY UT. This was a text-book demonstration of responsible university preparation. There is only one other thing that students need to be taught: “Rush & Crush.” They must be drilled the way infantry drills for ambush responses. This is the “swarm” defense. Everyone close enough, call it out, throw something, then “Rush & Crush.”
1. The supercilious attitude of many State Department people, akin to that displayed by Clinton White House staffers to GEN Barry McCaffrey when he worked in Joint Staff J-5: “… we don't talk to you military people …”, something I've had said to me by certain State people.
2. Rudyard Kipling's poem, “Tommy”: “… and it's Tommy this, and Tommy that, and chuck ‘im out, the brute. But it's ‘savior of his country' when the guns begin to shoot.'”)
By Joe Davidson Thursday, September 23, 2010; 8:20 PM
Now that most U.S. military forces have left Iraq, the American diplomats left behind face serious security problems the State Department is ill-prepared to tackle.
That's the grave message the Commission on Wartime Contracting in Iraq and Afghanistan presented to Congress on Thursday.
Much of the security once provided by the military will have to be done by private contractors, yet the department does not have the money to hire the number needed nor the capability to manage them.
Phi Beta Iota: The mixed tragedy-farce that is of our own making in Iraq will continue to drain blood, treasure, and spirit for the simple reason that we went in on the basis of 935 documented lies; while both military and diplomatic organizations lacked the integrity to get it right–one threw money at the problem without thinking, the other “went along” without screaming bloody murder in front of Congress and the public. Today the diplomats–we have zero sympathy–inherent a vast fortress that is actually unsustainable as well as unnecessary. The “threat” is vastly over-stated as it always in when security officers are in charge of threat assessments (the United Nations Department of Safety & Security is led by a former US diplomatic security officer, and we can attest from personal experience that DSS is largely corrupt in the worst case, inept in the best case, in its threat & risk assessments)–within State, ignorance and lack of integrity lead to two complementary problems: way too many individuals, most unqualified to be in-country, to be protected; and a security cadre with absolutely no clue that the “solution” is to evacuate most of them, turn the complex over to the Iraqis, and strip down to real professionals that can navigate in uncertain environments.
DOCUMENTARY DESCRIPTION
Episode 1: Happiness Machine
Episode 2: The Engineering of Consent
Episode 3: There is a Policeman Inside All Our Heads: He Must Be Destroyed
Episode 4: Eight People Sipping Wine in Kettering
CENTURY OF THE SELF asks the deep questions about the roots and methods of consumerism and representative democracy and the implications of the two. The foundation of this documentary is the idea that public relations and politicians have used the theories of Sigmund Freud to engineer a society of consent.
This series is about how those in power have used Freud s theories to try and control the dangerous crowd in an age of mass democracy. Adam Curtis
For more information about this series, visit its Wikipedia page.
Keywords from imdb.com: Propaganda, Public Relations, Consumerism, Capitalism, Media, Advertising
The below article in Defense News explains how, in Loren Thompson's words, the Pentagon is trying to embark on a “very important breakthrough” in its effort to determine how much weapons “should” cost. Thompson also expressed concern that the Pentagon does not have the right technical skills to make “should cost” happen.
Thompson's suggestion that a contract pricing strategy based on what something “should cost” is a new idea and a very important intellectual breakthrough is patently absurd. This article is a classic example of the amnesia and lack of curiosity infecting both modern American journalism and the courtiers in the Hall of Mirrors that is Versailles on the Potomac. To wit —
The essay by Andrew Bacevich (Colonel USA ret.) portrays one of the very worst aspects of the imperial court of Versailles on the Potomac — collective amnesia that opens the door to the grotesque…
Bob Woodward and all the president’s men (2010 edition)
by Andrew J. Bacevich
Amazon Page
Phi Beta Iota: Both of the above appear at the same link. While worth a full read to appreciate the self-serving devotion of Bob Woodward and the ongoing duplicity of the Pentagon and hypocrisy of the White House, there is nothing here that Noam Chomsky, Gore Vidal and many others–including Marine Corps General Smedley Butler, have not been saying for decades. Col Bacevich's book is a short continuation of the same theme, what Chuck Spinney has been calling since the 1980's “Versailles on the Potomac.” Missing from the Washington-based drama is the far deeper story being examined outside the beltway, to wit, “Is Washington in enemy hands?”
….in the future, any company that lacks a vital core of Gen F employees will soon find itself stuck in the mud.
With that in mind, I compiled a list of 12 work-relevant characteristics of online life. These are the post-bureaucratic realities that tomorrow’s employees will use as yardsticks in determining whether your company is “with it” or “past it.” In assembling this short list, I haven’t tried to catalog every salient feature of the Web’s social milieu, only those that are most at odds with the legacy practices found in large companies.
1. All ideas compete on an equal footing.
2. Contribution counts for more than credentials.
3. Hierarchies are natural, not prescribed.
4. Leaders serve rather than preside.
5. Tasks are chosen, not assigned.
6. Groups are self-defining and self-organizing
7. Resources get attracted, not allocated.
8. Power comes from sharing information, not hoarding it.
9. Opinions compound and decisions are peer-reviewed.
10. Users can veto most policy decisions.
11. Intrinsic rewards matter most.
12. Hackers are heroes.
Phi Beta Iota: We've been skirting all of these since 1988, and even more so since we opened Hackers on Planet Earth (HOPE) in 1994. Please do read the full articulation, and pass it on. It's is the single best summary we have found to date.
If the construction of settlements in the West Bank is meant to be on hold, why are Israeli buyers being offered new properties on Palestinian land at knock-down prices?
The housing project currently under construction in Almon offers enticingly priced, spacious family homes with a garden and a view. The surrounding neighbourhood, also known as Anatot, sits on a ridge overlooking the Judean hills, near Jerusalem, a blaze of cultivated greenery in the parched landscape. Residents have a relaxed air, and newcomers who have recently relocated from Jerusalem wish they'd made the move years ago. If I were a prospective house-buyer, I'd be charmed. But I would not be looking here – because Almon is in the occupied West Bank.
Phi Beta Iota: Worth a full read. This explains both the economics of the illegal settlements, and the massive financial resources that the Israeli government offers in favor of illegal settlements, at the same time that it lies to a complacent US Government that knows better, but prefers to sacrifice its diplomatic integrity for the pretense of progress.
