Ineptitude – Page 115 – Public Intelligence Blog

There is no “out of the box” thinking here, just dabbling on the margins.

Phi Beta Iota: We agree with Brother Marcus. This was a very disappointing document and not at all presidential in utility. There is no executive summary, no bullet points, no explicatory graphics, and no budgetary perspective (means to ways to ends). The individual memorandums are too long, too bland, and not imaginative in the least. Especially disappointing were the two pieces directly oriented on defense, the first by Peter Singer on drones, the second by Michael O'Hanlon on achieving defense budget efficiencies on the margins. The individual authors are first rate across the board, but the editorial function and the leadership function are both absent from this work. Singer plays it safe and calls for the establishment of protocols on drone use, avoiding the moral disengagement and extrajudicial assassination concepts that make the CIA drone program a crime against humanity; O Hanlon simply loses his excellent mind completely, and babbles about changes on the margin. Below the line is the complete Table of Contents for the Brookings document, and relevant alternative perspectives by Robert Steele.

Continue reading “Marcus Aurelius: Brookings 2013 Briefing Books for the President — Leans Left, Lacks Substance”

2013/01/222013/01/22

SmartPlanet: World Unemployment Rising, Western World Unemployment Has Global Impact

03 Economy, Civil Society, Commerce, Ineptitude

World unemployment rate on the rise

By Tyler Falk | January 22, 2013, 7:06 AM PST

Despite two consecutive years of falling global unemployment, the number of jobless is once again on the rise. And projections for future years aren’t looking much better.

According to a new report from the International Labour Organization, the global unemployment rate in 2012 rose to 5.9 percent of the workforce, increasing by 4.2 million people. Over 197 million people are now considered unemployed.

“An uncertain economic outlook, and the inadequacy of policy to counter this, has weakened aggregate demand, holding back investment and hiring,” said ILO Director-General Guy Ryder. “This has prolonged the labour market slump in many countries, lowering job creation and increasing unemployment duration even in some countries that previously had low unemployment and dynamic labour markets.”

Much of the increase can be blamed on rising unemployment in advanced economies.

The job market is particularly bad for workers under 24, as 12.6 percent are unemployed. And while the situation is expected to improve for young people in advanced economies, it’s only projected to worsen in emerging economies in Eastern Europe, East and Southeast Asia and the Middle East.

But, overall, a rising middle class in emerging economies should help soften the unemployment blow but not enough to prevent rising unemployment in the coming years.

So what can governments do?

“[M]any of the new jobs require skills that jobseekers do not have,” Ryder added. “Governments should step up efforts to support skills and retraining activities in order to address such mismatches which particularly affect young people.”

The report also noted that 39 million people left the labor market last year.

Read the full report here.

2013/01/212013/01/21

Yoda: There Is No Publishing Industry [This Has HUGE Implications for Education, Intelligence & Research]

Commerce, Ineptitude, IO Impotency

In the tar pit, the mammoths are.

There Is No Publishing Industry

All models are wrong, some models are useful – statistician George Box

The mental model we share of this thing we call the publishing industry is no longer useful. Most of us think of the publishing industry’s product as “books”. That’s like thinking that Amazon sells two products, bits and cardboard boxes. Amazon ships stuff in cardboard boxes. It’s what’s inside the box that you are buying. Likewise, it’s the information contained in the bits that you are buying when you buy a digital product from Amazon.

Physical books were never really the publishing industry’s product. It was always the stories, ideas, and information contained in the books. Now that there are competing digital containers for almost everything that has traditionally been delivered via physical books, it is imperative that we take a hard look at the different industries which were hidden from view by our once-useful model of the publishing industry. Because these industries are moving to the digital world at vastly different rates and to very different digital containers: ebooks, apps, and the web. In my terminology, an app is a digital container that promotes user interaction with content rather than linear reading; an ebook is a self-contained reading unit mostly without external links; and the defining feature of the web is external linking. To understand the future of publishing, we have to let go of the idea of “the publishing industry” and look at its products based on the needs they fulfill.

The first [of four] industry to begin disappearing from the print world was the database packaging industry. Directories, encyclopedias, and dictionaries are well on their way to extinction in the print world. The mass-market products in this industry have moved almost entirely to the web. A few of the higher-end products have moved to specialized apps. Because this industry was always peripheral to the main business, many folks in publishing didn’t fully comprehend the implications of this change: some products that were previously only available as physical books had a natural affinity to a different form and business model.

Continue reading “Yoda: There Is No Publishing Industry [This Has HUGE Implications for Education, Intelligence & Research]”

2013/01/21

David Isenberg: Recommended Book, Mel Goodman on National Insecurity, The Cost of American Militarism

Corruption, Government, Idiocy, Ineptitude, IO Impotency

Recommended! Coming out 12 February 2013.

“Mel Goodman has spent the last few decades telling us what's gone wrong with American intelligence and the American military, and now, in National Insecurity, he tells us what we must do to change the way the system works, and how to fix it. Goodman is not only telling us how to save wasted billions–he is also telling us how to save ourselves.” — Seymour M. Hersh, The New Yorker

Upon leaving the White House in 1961, President Eisenhower famously warned Americans about the dangers of a “military industrial complex,” and was clearly worried about the destabilizing effects of a national economy based on outsized investments in military spending. As more and more Americans fall into poverty and the global economy spirals downward, the United States is spending more on the military than ever before. What are the consequences and what can be done?

Melvin A. Goodman, a twenty-four-year veteran of the CIA, brings peerless authority to his argument that US military spending is indeed making Americans poorer and less secure while undermining our political standing in the world. Drawing from his firsthand experience with war planners and intelligence strategists, Goodman offers an insider's critique of the US military economy from President's Eisenhower's farewell warning to Barack Obama's expansion of the military's power. He outlines a much needed vision for how to alter our military policy, practices, and spending in order to better position the United States globally and enhance prosperity and security at home.

Melvin A. Goodman is the Director of the National Security Project at the Center for International Policy. A former professor of international security at the National War College and an intelligence adviser to strategic disarmament talks in the 1970s, he is the author of several books, including the critically acclaimed The Failure of Intelligence.

See Also:

Goodman, Mel (2008), Failure of Intelligence: The Decline and Fall of the CIA (Rowman & Littlefield)

Steele, Robert (2000), ON INTELLIGENCE: Spies and Secrecy in an Open World (AFCEA 2000, OSS, 2001)

Worth a Look: Book Reviews on Intelligence (Most)

2013/01/192016/03/26

Reflections on the Inability of Washington to Think with Integrity

All Reflections & Story Boards, Commerce, Corruption, Government, Idiocy, Ineptitude, Military, Non-Governmental

Power corrupts, no doubt about it. What most people miss is that it is not just about financial corruption that explicitly mis-directs scarce resources to benefit the few over the many (with Congress taking its standard 5% kick-back for delivering earmarks). Power also corrupts intellect. People forget how to think. They begin talking among themselves, shutting out external views, creating an incestuous cycle of circular citation. Col Mike Pheneger, then J-2 at the US Special Operations Command (USSOCOM) discovered this with respect to the Cuban Order of Battle (OOB), and I have found this myself on many occasions over the years.

Recently I have observed two deeply dysfunctional conversations in Washington. The first deals with intelligence and information overload, the second with the force structure requirements for the U.S. military beyond 2014.

Blithering Blobs of Blogdom

The intelligence discussion is best represented by SASA/INSA and The New America Foundation. The first fronts for the intelligence-industrial complex and the second for a mix of benefactors, none of whom appear actually interested in creating a government that works for all. Indeed, it can be said that the secret intelligence world and the “non-profit” think tank world share the same motivation: do whatever it takes to keep the money (inputs) moving, never mind the outputs or the outcomes.

Continue reading “Reflections on the Inability of Washington to Think with Integrity”

2013/01/172013/01/17

Mini-Me: Sandy Hook, Israel’s “Art Students” in Purple Van, Greenwich Safehouse, Nurse’s False Testimony — Four Competing Narratives

07 Other Atrocities, 11 Society, Corruption, Government, Idiocy, Ineptitude, IO Deeds of War, IO Impotency, Law Enforcement

Huh?

Obama “Gun Address” Misses Real Terrorism Threat

by Gordon Duff, Senior Editor

Despite attempts to blame a seemingly endless group of lunatic mass murderers for the equally endless number of devastating mass killings now plaguing the United States, our government, our “protectors” and, most damnably, our president, are failing to react to real terror attacks that are becoming an almost daily occurrence.

Ambassador Susan Rice was “sacrificed” for failing to cite the Benghazi attack as terrorism.

However, when something worse, when a dozen “somethings worse” happens, not in North Africa, but here at home, our schools, movie theatres, military bases, college campuses, the use of the term “terrorism” is forbidden.

Why?

. . . . . . . . .

The US Army has recognized a pattern of terrorist activity in several of the recent mass shootings, based on timing, type of target, control of media, lost evidence, poor investigations, a pattern that shows signs of the involvement of a military type operation against “soft targets” in the US.

Sandy Hook, we are told, is a total failure as an “false flag” terror attack, having left too many “loose threads.” Some are listed in the video below. In truth, there are hundreds:

Initial suspicions led investigators to extremist groups in the US, the National Socialist Movement, the US Border Patrol and the Hutarees.

However, investigations found these groups to be both almost entirely inactive or with a majority of members FBI informants.

Read full article with video and photos.

Continue reading “Mini-Me: Sandy Hook, Israel's “Art Students” in Purple Van, Greenwich Safehouse, Nurse's False Testimony — Four Competing Narratives”

2013/01/172013/01/18

NIGHTWATCH: Mali Out of Algeria — French Fighting Algerians Not Displaced Libyans + Mali RECAP

04 Inter-State Conflict, 05 Civil War, 08 Wild Cards, Cultural Intelligence, Government, Ineptitude, Military

Algeria: Islamist militants, apparently affiliated with al Qaida in the Islamic Maghreb, seized a natural gas facility in east-central Algeria early Wednesday. The 20 or so attackers took as hostages up to 41 foreign supervisors, technicians and workers. They include at least 13 Norwegians and seven Americans, plus one Irishman, and a number of Japanese and British citizens. Two workers died in the attack.

The group announced that this attack was in retaliation for the French use of Algerian airspace to mount their attack against Islamist rebels in Mali. The attack group reportedly is led by a militant named Mokhtar Belmokhtar, an Algerian. He claimed that his group would release the hostages if the French stopped their operations in Mali.

During this Watch, Algerian forces have surrounded the plant and the situation is in a standoff.

Comment: Despite French warnings about retaliation, this plant in eastern Algeria undertook no increased security measures. The salient features of the Islamists in Mali to date are their organization and discipline. Today's action adds to their military repertoire communications connectivity with sympathetic groups in Algeria. The Islamists threatened retaliation over the weekend and they have been as good as their word.

Today's attack and hostage-taking occurred a long way from Mali. The al-Qaida franchise in the Saharan region is far more sophisticated and coordinated than the Pashtun and Uzbek tribal fighters in Afghanistan or the tribal Arabs in Yemen. Southern Algeria appears to be their base of operations, not LIbya.

Mali: Malian and French ground troops clashed with Islamic rebels in Diabaly on 16 January. The French-Malian force has not yet recaptured the village.

Mauritania reportedly has increased its border patrols, reducing the rebel ability to operate with impunity from Mauritanian territory.

Comment: A prominent narrative in the English language press is that the jihadists and Islamist rebels who seized northern Mali, plus their weapons, came from Libya. In fact, the information in the public domain indicates they came from Algeria and maintain connectivity with other Algerian Islamist groups. The attack at the gas facility at In Amenas, Algeria, tends to reinforce that judgment.

The significance is that the Islamist takeover of northern Mali was not a ripple effect from the inept NATO management of the Libyan uprising. It is a more sinister and well planned expansion of the Algerian Islamist rebels, who form the core of al Qaida in the Islamic Maghreb. These are tough guys.

The French are not fighting Libyan terrorists in Mali. They are fighting Algerians [armed by Americans] …again. Apparently several thousand of them.

Continue reading “NIGHTWATCH: Mali Out of Algeria — French Fighting Algerians Not Displaced Libyans + Mali RECAP”