Ethics – Page 180 – Public Intelligence Blog

The United States of Confusion and Disorder

Descent into Chaos

by FRANKLIN C. SPINNEY

COUNTERPUNCH, WEEKEND EDITION NOVEMBER 1-3, 2013

The US exit strategy from Afghanistan is emerging …. and the picture is not pretty. Nevertheless, it is a revealing microcosm of what now passes for governance in the United States of Confusion and Disorder.

Consider please, this analysis by Dan Murphy in the Christian Science Monitor. Murphy explains why “The US war in Afganistan could turn into a pumpkin as soon as the middle of November,” because the governments of Afghanistan and Pakistan are now fighting for the favors of Al Qaeda!

Older readers may recall that we went into Afghanistan with the dual strategic aims of Regime Change — i.e., replacing the Taliban regime that had given sanctuary to Al Qaeda with a democratic government, based on human rights, that would never give sanctuary to Islamic Jihadists, as well a destroying Al Qaeda. Readers may also recall that President Obama’s decision to surge Afghan operations in 2010 was based on a fatally flawed McChrystal Plan, as I explained in the September 22 2009 and January 29-31, 2010 issues of CounterPunch.

Now, predictably, as we are leaving Afghanistan with our tail between our legs, the obscenely corrupt Karzai government that we installed and have propped up is struggling for survival by negotiating friendship agreements with some of the same Jihadis we have been trying to destroy.

While history never repeats itself, the larger story is that a remarkable parallel to the Soviet Afghan debacle and its aftermath is now emerging.

Continue reading “Chuck Spinney: The United States of Confusion and Disorder”

2013/11/012013/11/01

Penguin: Our Oath to the Constitution — and Our Failure to Honor that Oath…

Cultural Intelligence, Ethics, Government, Military, Peace Intelligence

The old guard, with a touch of guilt and and what remains of integrity, is trying to call a halt to the rape of the Army. The neo-con dead-enders and Obamites feel their wings getting clipped and are enlisting the Barnos to sharpen their beaks.

U.S. war decisions rightfully belong to elected civilian leaders, not the military

By David W. Barno,September 12, 2013

David W. Barno, a retired Army lieutenant general, is a senior adviser and senior fellow at the Center for a New American Security. He commanded U.S. and coalition forces in Afghanistan from 2003 to 2005.

A war the Pentagon doesn’t want

By Robert H. Scales,September 05, 2013

Robert H. Scales, a retired Army major general, is a former commandant of the U.S. Army War College.

Continue reading “Penguin: Our Oath to the Constitution — and Our Failure to Honor that Oath…”

2013/11/012013/11/01

David Swanson: An Ethical Accurate Drone Report

Drones & UAVs, Ethics

Finally a Drone Report Done Right

The U.N. and Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International recently released a flurry of deeply flawed reports on drone murders. According to the U.N.'s special rapporteur, whose day job is as law partner of Tony Blair's wife, and according to two major human rights groups deeply embedded in U.S. exceptionalism, murdering people with drones is sometimes legal and sometimes not legal, but almost always it's too hard to tell which is which, unless the White House rewrites the law in enough detail and makes its new legal regime public.

When I read these reports I was ignorant of the existence of a human rights organization called Alkarama, and of the fact that it had just released a report titled License to Kill: Why the American Drone War on Yemen Violates International Law. While Human Rights Watch looked at six drone murders in Yemen and found two of them illegal and four of them indeterminate, Alkarama looked in more detail and with better context at the whole campaign of drone war on Yemen, detailing 10 cases. As you may have guessed from the report's title, this group finds the entire practice of murdering people with flying robots to be illegal.

Alkarama makes this finding, not out of ignorance of the endless intricacies deployed by the likes of Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International. Rather, Alkarama adopts the same dialect and considers the same scenarios: Is it legal if it's a war, if it's not a war? Is it discriminate, necessary, proportionate? Et cetera. But the conclusion is that the practice is illegal no matter which way you slice it.

Continue reading “David Swanson: An Ethical Accurate Drone Report”

2013/10/31

Jon Rappoport: The hidden paranormal people

04 Education, 11 Society, Advanced Cyber/IO, Cultural Intelligence, Ethics

The hidden paranormal people

Conventional physics argues that all the tiny particles which make up the universe are:

neutral and unconscious and dead—

And yet, say these same physicists, the brain, which is only a collection of such particles, is conscious.

The absurdity of this contradiction can only be sustained by monopolistic authority.

Consciousness is as non-material and paranormal as paranormal can be.

Without it, obviously, we would not be communicating right now. We would not be here. We would not Be.

Categories like telepathy, ESP, clairvoyance, and telekinesis don't tell the whole story. They're just a pale reflection of the fact that Existence itself is paranormal.

Consensus reality, on the other hand, is a stage play based on the notion of “normal.”

So here we are, and we're all paranormal, and we're living in a normal world. If that isn't a joke, if that isn't a sickness, if that isn't a conspiracy, what is?

The Matrix can spawn one Agent Smith after another, like a machine turning out products, and still the incalculable and magical fact of consciousness endures beyond the machine.

The stage play called reality is dedicated to top-down control, because consciousness, if unleashed as creative power, if allowed to flourish, would explode the stage flats and take us out into an open sky of such varied magic it would ring in a multiverse of unpredictable beauties…none of which require supervision from the psychopaths behind the curtain.

Making life into a machine is the goal of elites. We, on the other hand, see something else.

Continue reading “Jon Rappoport: The hidden paranormal people”

2013/10/31

Marcus Aurelius: LTG Dave Barno on Building Better Generals (and Fewer of Them…)

04 Education, Cultural Intelligence, Ethics, Military, Officers Call

Interesting paper that came out a couple of nights ago from one of the DC think tanks. The principal author, LTG Dave Barno, was my classmate in a school in the early '80s when we were both captains. Biggest thing I see is the assertion that the major fraction of GO positions are “enterprise management” vice “operational,” or “tail” vice “tooth.” Assuming correct numbers and analysis, that should be an ego-defeater given the culture of the military. If you can buy into that, some of the other stuff seems reasonable.

EXTRACTS:

If left unaddressed, the divergence between the leadership skills of current senior military officers and the demands of an uncertain future may result
in a U.S. military led by generals and admirals who are prepared for neither the complexity of future warfare nor the efficient management of a hugely complex – and now resource-constrained – defense enterprise.

. . . . . . .

Many future flag officers will have no extended educational opportunities during the entire second half of their careers.

. . . . . . .

Once an officer is appointed to three-star rank, he or she will never pass before another promotion board, will never receive another written performance evaluation and will
rarely engage in setting formal expectations or goals with his or her boss in a new position.

PDF (40 Pages): (U) Building Better Generals (Barno et al,CNAS, 20 OCT 13)

2013/10/302013/10/30

Stephen E. Arnold: Forking Google – The Future is Samsung?

Advanced Cyber/IO, Commercial Intelligence, Design, Ethics, Innovation

Forking Google: The Future of Fone Flaps

I read “Samsung Is Pulling Another Amazon on Android, But This Is Even Bigger.” I liked the write up. It acknowledges in a semi-nice way that Google is either smarter than everyone else or Google is less smart than everyone thinks.

The idea is that open source Android is working like a Petri dish. Instead of growing little Googles, the Petri dish harbors a big Amazon and may soon give birth to a bigger Samsung. Here’s the point I noted:

As much as Google likes and touts that Android is open, that freedom may come with the cost of some control over the platform. Amazon may have started the first truly successful “fork” of Android, but Samsung is going after the whole place setting. Samsung kicked off its first Developers Conference on Monday and based on the keynote message, I wouldn’t be too happy if I were Google.

The point is that Android is supposed to be Google’s open source mobile platform. Others can use it, but Android is Google’s idea.

With iPhones too expensive for most mobile users and Microsoft mobile not getting the buzz Redmond hoped, Android is the mobile platform with legs it seems. Amazon and Samsung have figured this out. The companies have been moving forward with Android that has been reworked to make it less Googlely than Google may have hoped.

Amazon is a lesser problem for Google. Samsung, however, seems to be a bigger potential problem.

But my view is that the larger challenge will be from innovators in other countries who surf on Android. When I was in China, I learned about a number of mobile phones running Android that performed some interesting tricks. One taxi driver had a line of four mobile devices in his taxi. Each mobile had four SIMs. Each SIM connected to a different service providing information about pick ups.

I asked the taxi driver if the phones were running Google Android. The answer was, “I don’t know. There are cheap and do more than a high dollar, upper class phone. These are the future, not Apple or Google.”

Is the taxi driver correct? My view is that Google’s Android is not just fragmented. Android is enabling innovators to go in directions that may prove difficult for Google to control. Samsung may be the near term challenge for Google. Looking out over a longer time line, there may be a different set of challenges created by an open source mobile operating system, new manufacturing options, and a burgeoning demand for mobile devices that are delivering fresh, high-value functionality.

Sure the four phones put on a light show when orders came in. My smart phone has one SIM and was woefully out of step with the Chinese taxi driver’s needs. Google has to think about Android as free and open source software that may spawn some antibiotic resistant competitors.

Stephen E Arnold, October 29, 2013

2013/10/302013/10/30

Paul Craig Roberts: Ignored Reality Is Going To Wipe Out The Human Race

03 Economy, 11 Society, Advanced Cyber/IO, Communities of Practice, Cultural Intelligence, Ethics, IO Sense-Making, Officers Call

Ignored Reality Is Going To Wipe Out The Human Race

To inform people is hard slugging. Everything is lined up against the public being informed, or the policymakers for that matter. News is contaminated by its service to special interests and hidden agendas. Many scientists or their employers are dependent on federal money. Even psychologists and anthropologists were roped into the government’s torture and occupation programs. Economists tell lies for corporations and Wall Street. Plant and soil scientists tell lies for agribusiness and Monsanto. Truth tellers are slandered and persecuted. However, persistence can eventually win out. In the long-run, truth sometimes emerges. But not always. And not always in time.

I have been trying to inform the American people, economists, and policymakers for more than a decade about the adverse impacts of jobs offshoring on the US economy. The word has eventually gotten out. Last week I was contacted by 8th grade students competing for their school in CSPAN’s StudentCam Documentary Contest. They want to interview me on the subject of jobs offshoring for their documentary film.

America is a strange place. Here are eighth graders far ahead of the economics profession, the President, the Congress, the Federal Reserve, Wall Street, and the financial press in their understanding of one of the fundamental problems of the US economy. Yet, people say the public schools are failing. Obviously, not the one whose students contacted me.

Continue reading “Paul Craig Roberts: Ignored Reality Is Going To Wipe Out The Human Race”