Category: Officers Call

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Reference: Lying is Not Patriotic–Ron Paul

02 Diplomacy, 03 Economy, 07 Other Atrocities, 10 Security, 11 Society, Civil Society, Corruption, Counter-Oppression/Counter-Dictatorship Practices, Government, Hill Letters & Testimony, Journalism/Free-Press/Censorship, Media, Military, Misinformation & Propaganda, Movies, Officers Call, Peace Intelligence, Secrecy & Politics of Secrecy, Videos/Movies/Documentaries, YouTube
Chuck Spinney Recommends....

Several truths, nine questions.

Ron Paul on YouTube

Phi Beta Iota: Here are the questions as asked:

01  Do the American people deserve to know the truth regarding the on-going war in Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, and Yemen?

02  Could a larger questions be how can an Army private gain access to so much secret information?

03  Why is the hostility mostly directed at Assange the publisher and not  our government's failure to protect classified information?

04  Are we getting our money's worth from the $80 billion dollars per year we are spending on intelligence gathering?

05  Which has resulted in the greatest number of deaths?  Lying us into war, or WikiLeaks revelations or the release of the Pentagon Papers?

06  If Assange can be convicted of a crime for information that he did not steal, what does this say about the future of the First Amendment and the independence of the Internet?

07  Could it be that the real reason for the near universal attacks on Wikileaks is more about secretly maintaining a seriously flawed foreign policy of empire than it is about national security?

08  Is there not a huge difference between releasing secret information to help the enemy in a time of declared war, which is treason, and the releasing of information to expose our government lies that promote secret wars, death, and corruption?

09  Was it not once considered patriotic to stand up to our government when it is wrong?

See Also:

Journal: Politics & Intelligence–Partners Only When Integrity is Central to Both

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Journal: Barack Obama, Colin Powell, and National Security

Budgets & Funding, Government, InfoOps (IO), Intelligence (government), Methods & Process, Military, Officers Call, Open Government, Peace Intelligence, Policies, Policy, Reform, Strategy, Threats
Colin Powell

Will Colin Powell become Barack Obama's next Pentagon chief?

Toby Harnden, The Telegraph UK

4 December 2010

– – – – – – –

Obama's most important decision you haven't heard about — Pentagon leaders

Richard H. Kohn, Christian Science Monitor

6 December 2010

Breaking Down Obama's Cabinet Contenders (2008)

Brian Montopoli, CBSNews

6 November 2008

Phi Beta Iota: The most important decision Barack Obama faces is the fundamental one of whether he wants to lead a government that works for all, or continue to be a meaningless placeholder in the theater of the absurd.  Electoral Reform is the only  thing that matters at this point.  Absent Electoral Reform, his mid-term Cabinet appointments will be meaningless–business as usual.  Colin Powell is as good as it gets if he can reframe his sense of loyalty back to the Constitutional Oath and actually down-size the Pentagon program by a third or more, while shifting $200 billion a year to State, where Senator Chuck Hagel would be well qualified to get the place back to evidence-based policies and coherent strategic planning.  Commerce is a big one–Clyde Prestowitz would be our recommendation, along with Joseph Stiglitz to Office of Management and Budget–see our Virtual Cabinet at Huffington Post.  However stellar the appointments, nothing they do will matter absent fundamental Electoral Reform and a restoration of the integrity not only of the US executive policy process, but of the legislative deliberation process as well.  Only Electoral Reform can create an honest representative Congress.  There are many other critical changes to be made at the highest levels, but ONLY in the context of a restoration of the government being Of, By, and For We the People.  Obama is one single piece of paper away from greatness.  We observe with interest.

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Co-Intelligence Transforming U.S. Politics

About the Idea, Collaboration Zones, Communities of Practice, Counter-Oppression/Counter-Dictatorship Practices, InfoOps (IO), Journalism/Free-Press/Censorship, Methods & Process, Officers Call, Open Government, Policies, Reform
Tom Atlee

Phi Beta Iota: Robert Steele, our founder, has asked that we post the following as his testimonial.

If there were one person in America I would gladly sacrifice my life for, so as to give the larger group including my direct family the benefit of his continued wisdom, Tom Atlee is that person.  He is without peer, and we are all blessed to have him in our lives and within our Commonwealth.  PLEASE contribute to his endeavor–what he does creates real wealth for all of us, and that kind of wealth is the only riposte to the decades of unethical legalized looting that we have tolerated for too long.  America the Beautiful is coming back–Tom is walking point and deserves our strongest possible support.

Dear friends,

As America's dysfunctional politics and governance swings wildly out of equilibrium, the Co-Intelligence Institute has increased its focus on the transformation of the way the U.S. does politics.

As we track the transpartisan movement, the Coffee Party, the Tea Party, the No Labels movement, the Palin pre-campaign, the strange shifting dance between the Administration and Congress, and other political currents, we sense an emerging and significant force demanding change in the power relationships between the vast majority of “we, the people” on the one hand, and corporate and government elites on the other.

It is very instructive to watch how this populist energy is being manipulated and co-opted.  Many of the politicians positioning themselves as populists — “We're not going to take it any more!” — are themselves active members of the elite class they are supposedly battling, and totally beholden to the financial powers behind the political circus.

Continue reading “Co-Intelligence Transforming U.S. Politics”

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Reference: Has Wikileaks Killed Secrecy?

About the Idea, Analysis, Augmented Reality, Budgets & Funding, Collaboration Zones, Collective Intelligence, Communities of Practice, Computer/online security, Corporations, Counter-Oppression/Counter-Dictatorship Practices, Ethics, info-graphics/data-visualization, InfoOps (IO), Intelligence (government), International Aid, Journalism/Free-Press/Censorship, Key Players, Methods & Process, Money, Banks & Concentrated Wealth, Officers Call, Open Government, Policies, Policy, Power Behind-the-Scenes/Special Interests, Real Time, Reform, Research resources, Secrecy & Politics of Secrecy, Strategy, Threats
Jeff Jarvis

Julian Assange - WikileaksWikileaks: Power shifts from secrecy to transparency

Welt am Sontag in Germany asked me for an op-ed on Wikileaks. Here it is, auf Englisch. Hier, auf Deutsch.

Government should be transparent by default, secret by necessity. Of course, it is not. Too much of government is secret. Why? Because those who hold secrets hold power.

Now Wikileaks has punctured that power. Whether or not it ever reveals another document—and we can be certain that it will—Wikileaks has made us all aware that no secret is safe. If something is known by one person, it can be known by the world.

Full article online.

See Also:

Reference: On WikiLeaks and Government Secrecy + RECAP on Secrecy as Fraud, Waste, & Abuse

Reference: Transparency Killer App Plus “Open Everything” RECAP (Back to 01/2007)

Safety copy below the line.

Continue reading “Reference: Has Wikileaks Killed Secrecy?”

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Journal: Brooks on Assange, Others on Brooks

04 Education, 07 Other Atrocities, 10 Security, 11 Society, Civil Society, Collective Intelligence, Corporations, Corruption, Counter-Oppression/Counter-Dictatorship Practices, Cultural Intelligence, Government, IO Sense-Making, Journalism/Free-Press/Censorship, Military, Misinformation & Propaganda, Money, Banks & Concentrated Wealth, Officers Call, Power Behind-the-Scenes/Special Interests, Privacy, Secrecy & Politics of Secrecy

EDIT of 5 Dec 2010 to add commentaries by various others.

David Brooks

Op-Ed Columnist

The Fragile Community

By DAVID BROOKS

Published: November 29, 2010

Julian Assange, the founder of WikiLeaks, had moved 37 times by the time he reached his 14th birthday. His mother didn’t enroll him in the local schools because, as Raffi Khatchadourian wrote in a New Yorker profile, she feared “that formal education would inculcate an unhealthy respect for authority.”

. . . . . . .

She needn’t have worried. As a young computer hacker, he formed a group called International Subversives. As an adult, he wrote “Conspiracy as Governance,” a pseudo-intellectual online diatribe. He talks of vast “patronage networks” that constrain the human spirit.

Far from respecting authority, Assange seems to be an old-fashioned anarchist who believes that all ruling institutions are corrupt and public pronouncements are lies.

Read the rest of this revealing assessment….

Phi Beta Iota: We like David Brooks.  He's less submissive than David Ignatius, less pretentious than Fareed Zakaria, and generally has something interesting to say.  In this piece, most revealingly, he displays his limitations to the fullest.  We are quite certain that David Brooks means well, but the depth of his naivete in this piece is nothing short of astonishing.  The below lists of lists of book reviews will suffice to demonstrate that David Brooks is not as well-read as he needs to be, not as intellectual as he pretends to be, and not at all accurate in his assessment of Julian Assange.  We share with Steven Aftergood of Federation of American Scientists (FAS) concerns about Assange's judgment in releasing some materials that are gratuitous invasions of rightful privacy, but we also believe that Assange is finding his groove, and the recent cover story in Forbes captures that essence.  WikiLeaks is an antidote to corporate fascism and elective Empire run amok.  It meets a need.

Other Commentaries on the Same Article:

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Reference: On WikiLeaks and Government Secrecy + RECAP on Secrecy as Fraud, Waste, & Abuse

07 Other Atrocities, Corruption, Cultural Intelligence, Government, InfoOps (IO), Intelligence (government), IO Secrets, Methods & Process, Misinformation & Propaganda, Money, Banks & Concentrated Wealth, Officers Call, Policies, Policy, Power Behind-the-Scenes/Special Interests, Secrecy & Politics of Secrecy, True Cost

People are more likely to lie, exaggerate and distort when they know they won’t be held accountable for what they said, and people like to say what their interlocutors want to hear, says Jordan Stancil.

Jordan Stancil

Jordan Stancil is a lecturer in the Graduate School of Public and International Affairs of the University of Ottawa.

Phi Beta Iota: This is the single best overview of how secrecy supports corruption.  It is consistent with testimony to the Moynihan Commission on Secrecy and with Morton Halperin's findings in Bureaucratic Politics and Foreign Policy in which one of the “rules of the game” was “Lie to the President if you can get away with it.”  Today, the “rule of the game” is “Lie to the public if you can get away with it for at least one election cycle.”  Newt Gingrich started the decline with his power and ambition, Dick Cheney peaked at 935 documented lies that Colin Powell allowed to stand unchallenged, and now Obama, with Bloomberg in the wings, are the anti-climax of secrecy as fraud Of, By, and For Wall Street.  America has become a cheating culture, an unthinking culture, far removed from the essence of a Republic.

Middle East Online

First Published: 2010-12-05

On WikiLeaks and Government Secrecy

The more I think about the WikiLeaks episode, the less I know what to say about it. Unfortunately, too much commentary, right and left, has tried to inject certitude where ambivalence should be.

It is not clear whether the WikiLeaks disclosures will damage our national interest. During the few years I spent as a Foreign Service officer, in Jerusalem and Berlin, I produced and read a fair number of classified cables, and I understand the rather obvious point that diplomats might get more — and more sensitive — information when their contacts believe that what they say will remain secret. We have heard endless appeals to “common sense” about the need for secrecy on these grounds.

But common sense also tells us that people are more likely to lie, exaggerate and distort when they know they won’t be held accountable for what they said, and that people like to say what their interlocutors want to hear. The annals of diplomatic communication, indeed of all communication, are filled with evidence of this banal insight, which many people seem to have forgotten in their rush to defend government secrecy.

This is a permanent reference.  Read the rest below the line, followed by links.

Continue reading “Reference: On WikiLeaks and Government Secrecy + RECAP on Secrecy as Fraud, Waste, & Abuse”