AUSTIN – University of Texas junior Eric Gladstone was sitting in his 500-student organic chemistry class Tuesday morning when his cellphone buzzed with a text message – an urgent warning that a gunman was loose on campus.
Looking around, he noticed others glancing at their cellphones and registering the same worry he was feeling.
The warning sent throughout campus by administrators was prompted by reports that a young man, clad in black, wearing a ski mask and wielding a semiautomatic AK-47, had fired shots as he entered the southern edge of campus. The gunman, 19-year-old UT student Colton Tooley, fatally shot himself after police chased him into a library. No one else was injured.
Within 15 minutes of the first police calls, sirens, e-mails, the UT website and public address systems blared the warnings, telling more than 55,000 students, faculty and staff members that the campus was in lockdown and urging everyone to stay behind locked doors. Meanwhile, law enforcement from the university, city and state swarmed to the site.
UT's efficient alarm system – practiced and coordinated by law enforcement only weeks before – was credited by local and national experts with probably sparing the campus from injuries and death.
Phi Beta Iota: ATTABOY UT. This was a text-book demonstration of responsible university preparation. There is only one other thing that students need to be taught: “Rush & Crush.” They must be drilled the way infantry drills for ambush responses. This is the “swarm” defense. Everyone close enough, call it out, throw something, then “Rush & Crush.”
By Jeff Stein Washington Post Monday, September 27, 2010
The Justice Department said Monday that it found almost two dozen FBI agents, including supervisors, had cheated on an examto test their knowledge of new counterterrorism procedures. It suggested that the scandal might eventually spread far beyond the few offices it investigated.
“We believe the extent of the cheating related to this test was greater than the cases we detailed in this report,” Justice Department Inspector General Glenn A. Fine reported.
1. The supercilious attitude of many State Department people, akin to that displayed by Clinton White House staffers to GEN Barry McCaffrey when he worked in Joint Staff J-5: “… we don't talk to you military people …”, something I've had said to me by certain State people.
2. Rudyard Kipling's poem, “Tommy”: “… and it's Tommy this, and Tommy that, and chuck ‘im out, the brute. But it's ‘savior of his country' when the guns begin to shoot.'”)
By Joe Davidson Thursday, September 23, 2010; 8:20 PM
Now that most U.S. military forces have left Iraq, the American diplomats left behind face serious security problems the State Department is ill-prepared to tackle.
That's the grave message the Commission on Wartime Contracting in Iraq and Afghanistan presented to Congress on Thursday.
Much of the security once provided by the military will have to be done by private contractors, yet the department does not have the money to hire the number needed nor the capability to manage them.
Phi Beta Iota: The mixed tragedy-farce that is of our own making in Iraq will continue to drain blood, treasure, and spirit for the simple reason that we went in on the basis of 935 documented lies; while both military and diplomatic organizations lacked the integrity to get it right–one threw money at the problem without thinking, the other “went along” without screaming bloody murder in front of Congress and the public. Today the diplomats–we have zero sympathy–inherent a vast fortress that is actually unsustainable as well as unnecessary. The “threat” is vastly over-stated as it always in when security officers are in charge of threat assessments (the United Nations Department of Safety & Security is led by a former US diplomatic security officer, and we can attest from personal experience that DSS is largely corrupt in the worst case, inept in the best case, in its threat & risk assessments)–within State, ignorance and lack of integrity lead to two complementary problems: way too many individuals, most unqualified to be in-country, to be protected; and a security cadre with absolutely no clue that the “solution” is to evacuate most of them, turn the complex over to the Iraqis, and strip down to real professionals that can navigate in uncertain environments.
Click on Title to Read at Huffington Post and/or Comment.
I held a bi-partisan vote today, with me representing the Democratic Party while I represented the Republican Party. Strict ballot access controls ensured a unanimous outcome — the new Virtual President of the United States of America is Robert David Steele, or for Latinos, Roberto David de Steele y Vivas.
Over the next 45 days, on Tuesdays and Thursdays I will announce one critical policy decision, always in the context of a balanced budget and always with the public interest in mind — this is not going to be pretty, but 45 days from today, every American will be able to compare my virtual track record with the actual track record of those seeking re-election, or in the case of a tiny handful that overcame enormous obstacles, those seeking election for the first time.
Here is my first decision: America needs three Vice-Presidents, not one; a Vice President for the Commonwealth, who should be the Principal Vice President; a Vice President for Education, Intelligence, and Research; and a Vice President for National Security. I also reject the “winner take all” concept for naming my Cabinet, and will appoint a Coalition Cabinet in my next posting. When I run for actual election in 2012, all three Vice Presidents and all Cabinet members will be named 60 days prior to the election, and I will challenge my opponents to not only do the same, but to engage in cabinet level debates across the land, restoring the League of Women Voters as the honest broker of these debates. 30 days prior to Election Day, I will publish a balanced budget online, and I and my Cabinet will personally engage in a National Deliberative Dialog online, to ensure that before I am elected, my proposed balanced budget has the general approval of the entire voting public.
Education and restoration of the Republic will be my primary focus. If I fail, I will support Alaska, Hawaii, the Pacific Northwest, Texas, and Vermont in their growing demand for secession from the United States of America. The government we have today is out of control and out of touch; its time we flush the toilet we call the two-party tyranny.
Learn with the best–95% of our teachers are rated as excellent
Phi Beta Iota: We like this–it is what we had in mind when we tried to spark interest in merging AllWorld Languages and Telelanguage. This is the future of education, leveraging the infinite wealth of humanity in the lower four fifths of the global population. Apart from the transfer of knowledge, there is the “grandmother corps” that can be used to lift children's hearts and minds up, for that see the first link below.
Robert David Steele
