Journal ISSN 1078-1935 – Page 3022 – Public Intelligence Blog

FUll Story Online — Alternative Perspective

Original Announcement: Oct. 9 (Bloomberg) — President Barack Obama was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize “for his extraordinary efforts to strengthen international diplomacy and cooperation between peoples,” the Nobel Committee said.

“The Nobel Committee has in particular looked at Obama’s vision and work toward a world without atomic weapons,” Thorbjoern Jagland, chairman of the five-member Nobel committee said in an interview broadcast on Norway’s TV2 today. “Obama has as president created a new climate in international politics.”

Washington Post's Last Word: Only two other sitting presidents have won the Nobel peace prize, and they both won it for actual achievements. Theodore Roosevelt won in 1906 for his role in ending the Russo-Japanese war and Woodrow Wilson won in 1919 for founding the League of Nations and helping frame the post-World War I peace.

An aspirational Nobel is designed to promote a cause, and sometimes it backfires spectacularly.

Martin LeFevre: Obama’s Foreboding Nobel (new)

Obama still has time to reconsider accepting peace prize (new)

Obama and the Nobel Prize: When War becomes Peace, When the Lie becomes the Truth (new)

Norwegian Draws Fire over Nobel Choice

Another Fine Mess: Comics Whack Obama

Balance of Opinion: The impact of the prize

Obama's Nobel Is Unconstitutional

Continue reading “Journal: Nobel Peace Prize Implodes (Update 5)”

2009/10/092009/10/09

Journal: State of the Ummah (Muslims)

01 Poverty, 03 India, 04 Indonesia, 05 Iran, 11 Society, Civil Society, Cultural Intelligence

The State of the Ummah is both a re-mixed Internet film for which a non-US citizen has been held at Guantanamo for years, and a concept of community that explicitly includes Jews and pagans.

The main graphic shows relative distribution. This smaller graphic to the right shows the “divide” between East and West in starker terms.

Text reports are available–an Executive Summary and a Full Report. What they do not properly address are three facts:

1. Sunnis everywhere, Shi'ites in the minority and severely persecuted to the point of genocide. Note: the rough estimate of Shi'ites is 10-13% of the total, the bulk of them in Iran and southern Iraq.

2. Vulernability of Southeast Asia (Singapore, Malaysia, Thailand, and Myanmar) to encroachment.

3. The lack of religious counterintelligence and security campaign plans in any country, not just in relation to Muslims, but also dual Israeli citizens, Opus Dei, Mormons, etcetera. As states fail, so do loyalties. In our view, the terrorist-criminal nexus will be followed by the religious-criminal nexus. This makes poverty in predominantly Muslim areas the number one flash point for the future of global stability, in our view.

2009/10/082009/10/08

Journal: India, Demography, & the Future

03 India, Legislation, Mobile, Policies, Policy, Reform, Strategy

Full Story Online

India’s Demographic Moment

With the right conditions in place — education, entrepreneurialism, and environmental awareness among them — a young, eager, educated workforce can be the key to prosperity.

by Nandan Nilekani August 27, 2009

Harvard Business Review

When conditions are right, large numbers of young workers can drive a nation’s growth to remarkable levels. This theory is known as the “demographic dividend,” a phrase coined by demographer David Bloom. He proposes that when young working-age adults comprise a disproportionate percentage of a country’s population, the national economy is affected in positive ways.

Continue reading “Journal: India, Demography, & the Future”

2009/10/082009/10/08

Journal: Mis-Managing Spectrum

Collective Intelligence, Communities of Practice, Mobile, Policies, Technologies

Full Story Online

Warning on surge in wireless traffic

By Joseph Menn in San Francisco and Chris Nuttall in San Diego

October 7 2009

The head of the US Federal Communications Commission warned on Wednesday that there is not enough room in the airwaves for the “explosion” in wireless data traffic, setting the stage for a big realignment of spectrum usage as the government tries to help mobile carriers keep up with consumer demand.

“The biggest threat to the future of mobile in America is the looming spectrum crisis,” said Julius Genachowski, the Obama administration appointee who took over as head of the five-member FCC in late June.

Phi Beta Iota: Top-down management of bottom-up needs and capabilities does not work. Open Spectrum is the only possible solution and has been proven in South Korea among other places. It's time to stop selling spectrum and start demanding smart devices and intelligent sharing of the commonwealth.

2009/10/082009/10/12

Journal: Pork as Usual, John P. Murtha Oinks On

Reform

The Book on Two-Party Tyranny and Bad Government

Washington Post October 8, 2009 Pg. 2

Ex-Staffers Winning Defense Panel Pork, Study Finds

By Carol D. Leonnig, Washington Post Staff Writer

In the coming year's military spending bill, members of a House panel continue to steer lucrative defense contracts to companies represented by their former staffers, who in turn steer generous campaign donations to those lawmakers, a new analysis has found.

The Center for Public Integrity found that 10 of the 16 members of the House subcommittee on defense appropriations obtained 30 earmarks in the bill worth $103 million for contractors currently or recently employing former staffers who have become lobbyists. The analysis by the Washington watchdog group found that earmarks still often hinge on a web of connections, despite at least three criminal investigations of the practice that became public in the past year. Those probes focus on a handful of defense contractors and a powerful lobbying firm that together won hundreds of millions of dollars in work from the House panel and are closely tied to its chairman, Rep. John P. Murtha (D-Pa.).

Phi Beta Iota: A Senate staffer explained this to us. First, staffers are trusted to not testify against the boss. Second, staffers know the deal is 2% to 5% for every earmark ultimately appropriated. Earmarks are both a form of reductionism and a form of corruption, both antithetical to the survival of the Republic.

2009/10/082009/10/08

Journal: The New “Cold War” Pakistan vs India, Many vs. Israel

09 Terrorism, 10 Security, Government, Military

AP Full Story Online

Taliban claim Afghan bomb, say [Indian] embassy was target

KABUL – The Taliban have claimed responsibility for Thursday's suicide car bomb in the Afghan capital, saying their target was the Indian Embassy.

Phi Beta Iota: India's hands are not clean. There are ample reports of India offering safe-haven bases for cross-border terrorism into Pakistan, and the creation of the new Afghan intelligence and covert action agency under Indian and other auspices bodes ill. In our judgement, there is an urgent need for a multinational containment of Pakistan on the one side, and Israel on the other, to include a total end to the Israeli campaign of genocide and other atrocities against the Palestinian peoples. India is a much more responsible country than Pakistan, but its military and intelligence branches are out of control and must be brought under discipline if we are to contain Pakistan, which has the Sunni nuclear bomb, and prevent the emergence of a new Cold War that uses terrorists and “freedom fighters” to wage proxy war EVERYWHERE. Iran will be a player best contained by rushing to meet their legitimate needs for nuclear power. While everyone else is distracted, China will accelerate and deepen its virtual take-over of the Southern Hemisphere. As once stable governments begin to fail we anticipate an increase in ethnicity-based crime families that strive to meet the need for security and prosperity in the absence of reliable governnance. Naturally no one in Washington is thinking about any of this.

2009/10/072009/10/07

Journal: Return of the Jedi (or Not)

04 Education, Military

Full Story Online

Return of the Jedi

BY MAJ. GEN. ROBERT H. SCALES (RET.)

It’s that time again. About once a decade, the military services attempt to reform how they educate officers. This time, the catalyst is a series of Senate and House hearings on how well the services educate officers. The Defense Science Board will begin a study on military education reform soon. The defense intellectual blogosphere is electric with calls for reform. Other creative ideas for reform will follow in the coming days. And all will fail. . . . . . . . The Skelton reforms have shown that often legislation is the only sure way to achieve what cultural friction cannot overcome. To be sure, no effort as culturally disruptive as this can be implemented quickly. At least five years would be needed to get it off the ground, and more than a decade would pass before SSP-qualified officers would advance to positions of authority. But if we are to create a body of gifted officers capable of dealing with the complexities of modern warfare, we soon must begin to break the stranglehold of the service personnel systems and offer the proper rewards to those young, talented and ambitious officers who are most gifted in the strategic art. AFJ

Continue reading “Journal: Return of the Jedi (or Not)”

Martin LeFevre: Obama’s Foreboding Nobel (new)

Obama still has time to reconsider accepting peace prize (new)

Full Story Online India’s Demographic Moment

With the right conditions in place — education, entrepreneurialism, and environmental awareness among them — a young, eager, educated workforce can be the key to prosperity.

AP Full Story Online

Taliban claim Afghan bomb, say [Indian] embassy was target

Full Story Online

India’s Demographic Moment