Category: Ethics

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Journal: Selected MILNET Headlines

04 Inter-State Conflict, 05 Civil War, 08 Wild Cards, 09 Terrorism, 10 Security, Ethics, Government, Military, Reform

O's ‘Fixes' Will Fail:Feeding more fat to obese US intelligence (Ralph Peters)

None of these people, including our president, took what almost happened on Christmas seriously — until the public outcry spooked them.

To energize the bureaucratic proles, you have to chop off aristocratic heads. But President Obama won't use the guillotine. He's protecting incompetents. At our nation's expense.

The corrective measures announced Thursday boil down to two things: Buy more stuff (additional computer systems, full-body scanners, etc.), and re-arrange the deck chairs.

That won't do it. These measures don't address the two enduring handicaps our intelligence community (and our government) suffers in our duel with Islamist terrorists.

Yemen's Al Qaeda Scam (Robert Haddick)

It seems that whenever the international community discovers another al Qaeda franchise, a financial reward to the host seems to follow. Pakistan has perfected how to profit from this perverse incentive. Yemen is now showing itself to be an able student of the same technique.

U.S. Army In Africa: Dodging The Continent's Worst Wars (David Axe)

The U.S. Army’s role in all of this is to help strengthen the capabilities and capacity of our land force partners … so they can help protect their people, secure their borders, support development, contribute to better governance and help achieve regional stability.

Except, apparently, in cases where there’s too much terrorism, violent extremism, cyber attacks, piracy, illicit trafficking, crime, corruption, disease and displaced people.

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Worth a Look: Rahm Emanuel conducting pogroms within Obama administration and Democratic Party

Ethics, Government, Law Enforcement

Phi Beta Iota: This is a replay of a Wayne Madsen report.  Over lunch we checked with our most connected consultant and learned that this is roughly half right, with some of the specifics names and methods not right, but that over-all there is general consensus on three points:  Rahm is playing dirty “within and against the Democratic family”; Rahm is a big problem for the President; Rahm has to go (along with Brennan and if it were up to us, Axelrod would also be moved out of the White House).  The President needs a neutral professional Chief of Staff, someone like General Jones, who is the perfect Presidential-level administrator.  The President needs a national STRATEGY & POLICY advisor that can restore Whole of Government balance, an Office of Management and Budget director that can MANAGE, and a Director of National Intelligence–Admiral Blair deserves first shot–with AUTHORITY.  The below material is replayed to provoke reflection, nothing more.

Emanuel conducting pogroms within Obama administration and Democratic Party

WMR's White House press sources have revealed that President Obama's Chief of Staff, Rahm Emanuel, is conducting a virtual political pogrom within the administration and the Democratic caucus in Congress. WMR has learned that the National Security Agency's warrantless wiretapping program, once known as STELLAR WIND but changed after the classified code name was leaked to the media, is being used by Emanuel to force administration officials and Democrats in Congress to “toe the line” in their support of Obama's policies, including health care. the surge in Afghanistan, and the bail out of Wall Street.

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Journal: Reflections on the US National Debt

Collective Intelligence, Commercial Intelligence, Communities of Practice, Ethics, Policies
Chuck Spinney

In the coming months, we are going to be inundated by the rhetoric surrounding an economic policy debate over the question of whether or not the Federal Government ought to begin to reduce the fiscal imbalances in its budget.  The ideology of Joseph Schumpeter's Creative Destruction will be pitted against ideology of John Maynard Keynes, and the dominant issue will be the question of retrenchment: Should the Federal Government retrench? … or .. Will consumers and businesses continue to retrench?

The chart, which I have used before. It portrays the buildup of debt as a percentage of GDP for the different categories indebtedness that are at the center of the retrenchment question. All of the data from 1946 forward was compiled by the Federal Reserve.  Earlier data is from a mixture of sources including the Census, Fed, GAO, and Morgan Stanley.  I believe , it shows why some kind of retrenchment is now inevitable.

Although most economists and policy makers like to think of an economic system in mechanistic terms, the economy is in fact an unpredictable living thing made up of millions of players who move forward on a one-way trip through time along a pathway shaped by an interplay between chance and necessity.  In this sense, you can think of the figure above is an outward manifestation of the historical behaviour of a complex living organism.   When we hear pundits speak of the interplay of fear and greed, Greenspan's “irrational exuberance, or Keynes' “animal spirits”  they are talking about the living aspects of this system (to which they immediately slip backward in to applying mechanistic diagnostics).  When they do so, they forget that all living systems are complex open systems that use an ever-changing homeostatic mix of positive and negative feedback loops to maintain stability, while they maintain their structure by feeding on and expelling waste into their environment.  When these internal control loops get out of balance, the homeostatic regulating system breaks down, and the entire organism goes out of control in a form of runaway behavior, like cancer cells in living tissue.

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Journal: National Intelligence or National Goat-F…?

08 Wild Cards, 09 Terrorism, 10 Security, Collaboration Zones, Communities of Practice, Ethics

Barack Obama was inaugurated as the first president to take office in the Age of Terrorism. He inherited two struggles — one with Al Qaeda and its ideological allies, and another that divides his own country over issues like torture, prosecutions, security and what it means to be an American. The first has proved to be complicated and daunting. The second makes the first look easy.

NATO official: US spy work lacking in Afghanistan

Eight years into the war, the U.S. intelligence community is only “marginally relevant” to the overall mission in Afghanistan, a senior intelligence official for the international forces wrote in a report released less than a week after seven CIA employees died in a suicide attack.

Intelligence Overhaul Ordered For Afghanistan

The overhaul announced Monday will broaden the scope of intelligence gathering from hunting down extremists to gathering information about local attitudes, concerns, people and leaders as part of an effort to win over the Afghan population.

Webster Tarpley on Nigerian Staging by Rogue Moles in US Intelligence

Officials in the Obama White House are considering the possibility that the Christmas day attempt by Nigerian terrorist Umar Farouk Mutallab to blow up an airliner about to land in Detroit was deliberately and intentionally facilitated by unnamed networks inside the US intelligence community. This was the gist of a report by Richard Wolffe delivered in this evening’s edition of cable network MSNBC’s Countdown program, hosted by Keith Olbermann: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/3036677/#34694889.

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Journal: WIRED to IC–You’re Tired, Get Wired….

Collaboration Zones, Communities of Practice, Ethics, Key Players, Mobile, Policies, Real Time, Threats, Topics (All Other)

Full Story Online

Pink Slips, Spyblogs, and More New Year’s Resolutions for the Intelligence Community

Michael Tanji spent nearly 20 years in the US intelligence community. A veteran of the US Army, Michael has served in both strategic and tactical assignments worldwide, and has participated in national and international analysis and policy efforts, including projects for the NIC, NSC and NATO. A Claremont Institute Lincoln Fellow. Michael lectures on intelligence issues at The George Washington University. He is also an occassional contributor to the Weekly Standard and is the editor of _Threats in the Age of Obama.

A near-successful bombing on Christmas, a suicide attack on the CIA — it’s been a rotten ten days for the U.S. Intelligence Community. And unless things change in a serious way, the spy agencies can expect many more rotten days ahead. But there are some steps that the IC can take in 2010 that could mean fewer failures, more success, and more lives saved. Think of them as New Years’ resolutions for the spy agencies.

Pink Slips.    Go All In for 2.0.    Align Policy with Practice.    Get Real About Training.    Open Back Up.

Terrorism, transnational crime, cyber security: all problems that are only going to get worse as the world gets more wired and interconnected; all problems that cannot be addressed without a strong intelligence apparatus. The security of the nation is every administrations primary responsibility, which makes resolving to spend political capital on these low-cost, high-return efforts no-brainers.

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Journal: Evidence of Nigerian Terrorist Being Staged

09 Terrorism, 10 Security, Collective Intelligence, Ethics, Government
Full Story Online

Evidence shows Nigerian bomber event was staged

All evidence shows that the nigerian bomber event was staged and was a set up.

Watch the CNN interviews with three adults on the airplane.

. . . . . . .

Secondly, there was a man that filmed the entire event. He filmed the entire event from the beginning to the end.

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Journal: Resistance to Federal Mandates Grows

08 Wild Cards, Collaboration Zones, Communities of Practice, Ethics, Policies, Real Time, Threats

Resist DC: NH Legislators Look to Nullify Federal Gun Laws

While the bill’s title focuses on federal gun regulations, it has far more to do with the 10th Amendment’s limit on the power of the federal government. It states, in part:

The Tenth Amendment to the Constitution for the United States guarantees to the states and their people all powers not granted to the federal government elsewhere in the constitution and reserves to the State and people of New Hampshire certain powers as they were understood at the time that New Hampshire ratified the Bill of Rights, particularly the Tenth Amendment in 1790. The guaranty of those powers is a matter of contract between the State and people of New Hampshire and the several States comprising the United States as of the time that the compact was agreed upon and adopted by New Hampshire and the several States comprising the United States.

The regulation of inter-state commerce was delegated by the People of the Several States to the federal government in the US Constitution. Since the regulation of intra-state commerce was not delegated to the federal government, this authority, as codified in law by the 10th Amendment, remains with the State governments or the People themselves.

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