Journal: State of the Ummah (Muslims)

01 Poverty, 03 India, 04 Indonesia, 05 Iran, 11 Society, Civil Society, Cultural Intelligence
Muslim Distribution
Muslim Distribution

The State of the Ummah is both a re-mixed Internet film for which a non-US citizen has been held at Guantanamo for years, and a concept of community that explicitly includes Jews and pagans.

Wiki Simplified View
Wiki Simplified View

The main graphic shows relative distribution.  This smaller graphic to the right shows the “divide” between East and West in starker terms.

Text reports are available–an Executive Summary and a Full Report.  What they do not properly address are three facts:

1.  Sunnis everywhere, Shi'ites in the minority and severely persecuted to the point of genocide.  Note: the rough estimate of Shi'ites is 10-13% of the total, the bulk of them in Iran and southern Iraq.

2.  Vulernability of Southeast Asia (Singapore, Malaysia, Thailand, and Myanmar) to encroachment.

3.  The lack of religious counterintelligence and security campaign plans in any country, not just in relation to Muslims, but also dual Israeli citizens, Opus Dei, Mormons, etcetera.  As states fail, so do loyalties.  In our view, the terrorist-criminal nexus will be followed by the religious-criminal nexus.    This makes poverty in predominantly Muslim areas the number one flash point for the future of global stability, in our view.

Journal: Mis-Managing Spectrum

Collective Intelligence, Communities of Practice, Mobile, Policies, Technologies

Full Story Online
Full Story Online

Warning on surge in wireless traffic

By Joseph Menn in San Francisco and Chris Nuttall in San Diego

October 7 2009

The head of the US Federal Communications Commission warned on Wednesday that there is not enough room in the airwaves for the “explosion” in wireless data traffic, setting the stage for a big realignment of spectrum usage as the government tries to help mobile carriers keep up with consumer demand.

“The biggest threat to the future of mobile in America is the looming spectrum crisis,” said Julius Genachowski, the Obama administration appointee who took over as head of the five-member FCC in late June.

Phi Beta Iota: Top-down management of bottom-up needs and capabilities does not work.  Open Spectrum is the only possible solution and has been proven in South Korea among other places.  It's time to stop selling spectrum and start demanding smart devices and intelligent sharing of the commonwealth.

Journal: The New “Cold War” Pakistan vs India, Many vs. Israel

09 Terrorism, 10 Security, Government, Military

AP Full Story Online
AP Full Story Online

Taliban claim Afghan bomb, say [Indian] embassy was target

KABUL – The Taliban have claimed responsibility for Thursday's suicide car bomb in the Afghan capital, saying their target was the Indian Embassy.

Phi Beta Iota: India's hands are not clean.  There are ample reports of India offering safe-haven bases for cross-border terrorism into Pakistan, and the creation of the new Afghan intelligence and covert action agency under Indian and other auspices bodes ill.  In our judgement, there is an urgent need for a multinational containment of Pakistan on the one side, and Israel on the other, to include a total end to the Israeli campaign of genocide and other atrocities against the Palestinian peoples.  India is a much more responsible country than Pakistan, but its military and intelligence branches are out of control and must be brought under discipline if we are to contain Pakistan, which has the Sunni nuclear bomb, and prevent the emergence of a new Cold War that uses terrorists and “freedom fighters” to wage proxy war EVERYWHERE.  Iran will be a player best contained by rushing to meet their legitimate needs for nuclear power.  While everyone else is distracted, China will accelerate and deepen its virtual take-over of the Southern Hemisphere. As once stable governments begin to fail we anticipate an increase in ethnicity-based crime families that strive to meet the need for security and prosperity in the absence of reliable governnance. Naturally no one in Washington is thinking about any of this.

Journal: Return of the Jedi (or Not)

04 Education, Military
Full Story Online
Full Story Online

Return of the Jedi

BY MAJ. GEN. ROBERT H. SCALES (RET.)

It’s that time again. About once a decade, the military services attempt to reform how they educate officers. This time, the catalyst is a series of Senate and House hearings on how well the services educate officers. The Defense Science Board will begin a study on military education reform soon. The defense intellectual blogosphere is electric with calls for reform. Other creative ideas for reform will follow in the coming days. And all will fail.   . . . . . . .  The Skelton reforms have shown that often legislation is the only sure way to achieve what cultural friction cannot overcome. To be sure, no effort as culturally disruptive as this can be implemented quickly. At least five years would be needed to get it off the ground, and more than a decade would pass before SSP-qualified officers would advance to positions of authority. But if we are to create a body of gifted officers capable of dealing with the complexities of modern warfare, we soon must begin to break the stranglehold of the service personnel systems and offer the proper rewards to those young, talented and ambitious officers who are most gifted in the strategic art. AFJ

Continue reading “Journal: Return of the Jedi (or Not)”

Journal: A Day in the Life of US Grunts in AF

Ethics, Government, Military, Threats

It will take more than technology to win war

Despite the army's newest technology, one of their most valuable assets so far was an informant: a farmer with a taste for opium.

Seattle Times October 7, 2009 Pg. 1 Hal Bernton

In the farmlands and ancient villages of the Arghandab, an Army campaign launched this summer has been a slow, difficult grind, and insurgent forces continue to hold sway over large areas. Technology alone isn't enough to win this fight

Phi Beta Iota: This piece moved us, and reminded us of the The Soldier's Load.  Weight, Water, and “who's got eyes on?”  Then we recall The Tunnels of Cu Chi and more recently, Phantom Soldier.  President Obama is caught between those he listens to, who want him to see AF in isolation, and those he does not listen to, who want him to address all ten high-level threats by harmonizing all twelve core policies within a balanced budget.  The US IC, which should be empowering the President, appears AWOL.

Journal: Chuck Spinney and Pat Buchanan on Groupthinking Apparat Moves to Finish Off Obama

05 Civil War, 10 Security, Ethics, Government, Military, Peace Intelligence

Chuck Spinney Sends: The attached article, Generals Open New Front in Washington,” by Pat Buchanan describes how the time honored practice of Versailles Groupthink is now closing in to circumscribe President Obama's strategic options in Afghanistan and Pakistan, much as it did to Lyndon Johnson during Vietnam.

Note how the “strategic” options for Afghanistan are boiling down to a consensus view of an either/or decision.  Either a large escalation of US ground forces or an escalation of destabilizing Predator attacks, particularly in Pakistan, or a compromise on some combination of the two.  In all cases, there will be a large increase in the size of the Afghan Army.  That questionable enterprise is taken as a given by the emerging consensus view.  If Buchanan is right about this either/or choice … Obama is being set up big time by advisors, because, as near as I can tell, Obama has no access to outside or dissenting views.  There is no third or fourth way, because there is no one in the role of George Ball to just say no (who LBJ ignored much to his chagrin), and there is no one on Capital Hill with political or military smarts or the stature to shape a third, more practical alternative. Continue reading “Journal: Chuck Spinney and Pat Buchanan on Groupthinking Apparat Moves to Finish Off Obama”

Journal: Director of National Intelligence Reverses Progress–Time to Rethink Everything

Government, Methods & Process, Reform, Technologies, Tools

IC Meets OSINT
IC Meets OSINT

Shutdown Of Intelligence Community E-mail Network Sparks E-Rebellion

The Atlantic POLITICS

Marc Ambinder

Oct 6 2009

The intelligence community's innovative uGov e-mail domain, one of its earliest efforts at cross-agency collaboration, will be shut down because of security concerns, government officials said.  The decision, announced internally last Friday to the hundreds of analysts who use the system, drew immediate protests from intelligence agency employees and led to anxiety that other experimental collaborative platforms, like the popular Intellipedia website, are also in the target sights of managers.

It follows reports that another popular analytic platform called “Bridge,” which allows analysts with security clearances to collaborate with people outside the government who have relevant expertise but no clearances, is being killed, and indications that funding for another transformational capability, the DoDIIS Trusted Workstation, which allows analysts to look at information at a variety of clearance levels — Secret, Top Secret, Law Enforcement Sensitive– is being curtailed.