Category: Journal ISSN 1078-1935

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Journal: Focus on Amb David Johnson’s Crime Ideas

09 Terrorism, 10 Transnational Crime, Policy

The Escalating Ties between Middle Eastern Terrorist Groups and Criminal Activity

Original Online Source

Featuring David Johnson    January 19, 2010

Ambassador David Johnson is the assistant secretary of state for the Bureau of International Narcotics and Law Enforcement Affairs. In this position, Ambassador Johnson advises the president, secretary of state, related State Department bureaus, and other relevant government agencies on international narcotics and crime. In addition, he has served as deputy chief of mission for the U.S. embassy in London and as U.S. ambassador to the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe.

Download Ambassador Johnson's prepared remarks. (PDF)

Fighting Networks with Networks: Partnership and Shared Responsibility on Combating Transnational Crime

David T. Johnson  Honolulu, Hawaii   November 10, 2009

Keynote Address at the Trans-Pacific Symposium on Dismantling Transnational Illicit Networks

Phi Beta Iota: Tip of the Hat to Berto Jongman in Europe for isolating these as worthy of study.

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Journal: Intelligence Priority Theater, Weak Strategy

08 Wild Cards, Ethics, Government, Law Enforcement, Methods & Process, Military, Reform

China Removed As Top Priority For Spies

The decision downgrades China from “Priority 1” status, alongside Iran and North Korea, to “Priority 2,” which covers specific events such as the humanitarian crisis after the Haitian earthquake or tensions between India and Pakistan.

One new area that has been given a higher intelligence priority under the Obama administration is intelligence collection on climate change, a nontraditional mission marginally linked to national security. The CIA recently announced that it had set up a center to study the impact of climate change.

Phi Beta Iota: The priorities are primarily influential on collection by the National Security Agency (NSA), determining whether the “system” stays on Beijing or goes to Central Asia instead, and this is probably the heart of the matter.  HOWEVER, in combination with the DoD concerns that CIA is totally ineffective with respect to China, Afghanistan, or anything else of immediate concern (e.g. Somalia, Sudan, Yemen), and the idiocy of creating a Climate Change Center rather than restructuring to attack all ten high-level threats to humanity, this latest “theater” must be labeled for what it is–naked Emperors parading their very expensive rags.  CIA is an utter travesty in all respects.  The DNI is treading water for lack of vision, understanding, authority, and the will to confront “the system.”  DoD is not much better–paper-pushing stuffed shirts and politically-correct uniforms disconnected from ground truth and the real needs of policy directors, acquisition managers, and operational commanders down to the company level.  Not pretty at all.

See also:

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Journal: NIGHTWATCH Turkey-Israel, Sudan

08 Wild Cards

Turkey-Israel: Turkey and Israel no longer have the same strategic closeness as in the past, although some common strategic issues continue, Israeli military intelligence chief Amos Yadlin said today and Ynet reported. Speaking to members of the Knesset's Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee, Yadlin said Turkey no longer needs strategic closeness with Israel. Turkey is moving from a secular approach to what he called a “radical direction,” an apparent reference to Turkey’s outreach to Islamic states, including Iran, Lebanon and Syria.

Sudan:  President Omar al Bashir said today that his government would accept secession by the southern Sudanese, provided the southerners voted for independence in a referendum next year.

Speaking at a ceremony marking five years since the end of the north-south war, he said his Northern Congress Party did not want the south to secede, but said the party would be the first to welcome such a decision. This is an unusually conciliatory tone considering that much of Sudan’s oil wealth is in southern Sudan.

In response the president of Southern Sudan, Salva Kirri, said “The north and south will continue to be economically and politically connected whatever the choice of the people of Southern Sudan.,”

Comment: it is difficult to accept Bashir’s promises at face value and the date for a referendum has not yet been announced.

Phi Beta Iota: NIGHTWATCH Subscription Page at AFCEA.

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Journal: Haiti Maps, Disaster Capitalism, Photos

08 Wild Cards

Perry-Castañeda Library
Map Collection

Online Maps of Current Interest

See also:

Steady Flow of local photos on Twitpic.

Charities in Haiti Now

Disaster Capitalism Headed to Haiti

US “Security” Companies Offer “Services” in Haiti

Journal: Haiti Rolling Update

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Journal: Europe is Reading….

Cultural Intelligence, Government, Law Enforcement
Berto Jongman Recommends...

Suggestions to improve American intelligence: think as a brain

What’s wrong with American intelligence?

In sum, the thinking goes, we need to gather more information, then work harder to connect the dots.

Those impulses are understandable, but they miss the most important problem. From studying many individual cases, and conducting detailed post-mortems of US intelligence failures in the cases of Iraqi weapons of mass destruction and the 1979 Iranian Revolution, I have found that many common assumptions about why our intelligence fails are misguided.

Open Source On the Table

The problems with our intelligence system aren’t primarily problems with information. They are problems with how we think.

Interpol Project White Flow!!!!  convergence of drug trtade and terrorism (Skip Blank Screen Upper Right)

(Associated Press Via Acquire Media NewsEdge) LYON, France_Interpol has seen no proof so far that terror groups like al-Qaida are profiting from big-money ransoms paid out to pirates operating off eastern Africa, the international police group's No. 2 said Tuesday.

Jean-Michel Louboutin spoke to The Associated Press as Interpol opened a closed-door, two-day conference at its Lyon headquarters on tackling the money trail in piracy.

Interpol will create a task force to crack down on maritime piracy “in all its facets,” said Interpol Secretary-General Ronald K. Noble in a statement Tuesday. It did not elaborate.

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Journal: Satan Writes Pat Robertson on Haiti

Collective Intelligence

Dear Pat Robertson,

I know that you know that all press is good press, so I appreciate the shout-out. And you make God look like a big mean bully who kicks people when they are down, so I'm all over that action. But when you say that Haiti has made a pact with me, it is totally humiliating. I may be evil incarnate, but I'm no welcher. The way you put it, making a deal with me leaves folks desperate and impoverished.

Sure, in the afterlife, but when I strike bargains with people, they first get something here on earth — glamour, beauty, talent, wealth, fame, glory, a golden fiddle. Those Haitians have nothing, and I mean nothing. And that was before the earthquake. Haven't you seen “Crossroads”? Or “Damn Yankees”?

If I had a thing going with Haiti, there'd be lots of banks, skyscrapers, SUVs, exclusive night clubs, Botox — that kind of thing. An 80 percent poverty rate is so not my style. Nothing against it — I'm just saying: Not how I roll.

You're doing great work, Pat, and I don't want to clip your wings — just, come on, you're making me look bad. And not the good kind of bad. Keep blaming God. That's working. But leave me out of it, please. Or we may need to renegotiate your own contract.

Best from Wall Street,

Satan

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Journal: InfoTech Gap Between Private & Public

InfoOps (IO), Technologies

Full Story Online

White House meets corporate CEOs for ideas on modernizing government

Because too many government information technology systems are rooted in the 1960s and ’70s, the White House is convening a conference today of 50 corporate chief executives with the hope of generating fresh ideas to help modernize government and improve efficiency.

Chief Performance Officer Jeffrey Zients, who has spent 20 years in the private sector, said that “in my seven months as CPO it has become clear to me that one of the biggest challenges we face is the technology gap that exists between the public and private sectors.”

Phi Beta Iota: Despite the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) effort to find “common solutions,” the reality is that stove-pipe budgets and stove-pipe promotion systems produce stove-pipe minds.  What OMB should be doing is creating a global skunk works to establish the open source trinity: free/open source software, open source intelligence, and open spectrum, amidst deep Multinational Engagement.  Of course, DoD could do this on its own, if it really wanted to, through the Defesne Open Source Center and embedded Multinational Decision Support Center.

noble gold