Hayden drew a Venn diagram to explain where the CIA needs to operate. First, he drew three circles that represent the traditional parameters: An activity must be technically feasible, operationally relevant and lawful. Then he added a fourth requirement. The activity must also be “politically sustainable,” through more transparency with Congress and the public. “We need a program that does not have an on-off switch every two years,” he said.
Omand argued that the intelligence community must accept a “paradigm shift.” The old “secret state,” in which intelligence agencies could do pretty much as they liked, is gone. In its place is a “protecting state,” in which the public gives the intelligence agencies certain powers needed to keep the country safe. It's a “citizen-centric approach,” Omand explained, based on the reality of mutual dependence. The spies need information from the community (especially the large Muslim population in Britain), and the public needs protection.
Phi Beta Iota: Reformation finds new means for old ways, Transformation adapts new means to new ways. Empires consume their own citizens at the same time they destroy other cultures. For serious journalism, see the work of John Pilger.
The backlash is sharp as voters learn that Obama is not the man they thought he was.
By Victor Davis Hanson
National Review Online, September 18, 2009
No one imagined that Barack Obama, during his first nine months in office, would be falling in the polls even faster than George W. Bush did prior to 9/11. We all knew what Obama’s weaknesses were as he came into office — a lack of experience in foreign affairs, little knowledge of how private business works, and poor judgment concerning the extremist company he had kept in the past.
Instead, the real anger from independents arises over disappointment, false merchandising, and hypocrisy. It is real and deep — as is true of any animosity that arises from a sense of betrayal of former trust.
. . . . . . . .The Central Intelligence Agency is deploying teams of spies, analysts and paramilitary operatives on top of the nearly 700 employees it already has in the war-torn country in parallel with a military expansion that will see 68,000 US troops in Afghanistan by year's end. . . . . . . . The incoming spies are receiving a broad range of assignments, including working in tandem with special forces units hunting high-value targets, tracking public sentiment in regions seen as shifting support toward the Taliban and gathering intelligence on corruption in the Afghan government, the Times said.
Chuck Spinney says: Even though OODA loops shaping nutty mass behaviour are becoming ever more disconnected from reality, Frank Rich shows this fact does not imply that the phenomenon of populist rage is not based on some real frustrations, grievances, anxieties, and fears. CS
The New York Times
OP-ED COLUMNIST
Even Glenn Beck Is Right Twice a Day
FRANK RICH
Cartoonist:Barry Blit
Time put Beck on its cover this week. Man of the Year may not be far behind. Beck is not, as many liberals assume, merely the latest incarnation of Rush Limbaugh. He is something different. That’s why he is gaining on his antecedents — and gaining traction in the country’s angrier precincts.
What we found very early on was that the values that predict well do not depend on personal psychology, but rather that they differ by three subcultures: Traditional, Modern and Trans-Modern. The latter are the Cultural Creative population, and this was the first research to show that ecology values and spiritual-psychological values made a difference to people’s lifestyles, and to their stance as voters. Because they are cultural, the values we measured are slow to change, unlike attitudes and opinions, and the business cycle has very little effect on them (though it affects people's ability to pay for what they want).
It’s the way cultures construe reality that matters. Thus, a financial materialism measure is part of what identifies the Modernist subculture, and an ecological measure is part of what identifies the emerging culture of the planet, and the Cultural Creatives. When we put them into a context of politics, they are at the opposite ends of a larger dimension, the tense opposition between a powerful, but recently wounded, business conservatism, versus a large and growing group of new ecological and planetary concerns, which grew out of all the new social movement values and beliefs. The surprise that then emerges across all cultural creatives studies is that this takes on the flavor of something very consequential.
New research data released August 25, 2008 by Dr. Paul Ray depicts a New Political Compass which shows that politics in the United States is no longer along a horizontal left/right divide. There is now a much more complex political landscape shaped by the emergence of what Dr. Ray calls the “Political North,” which is shifting the political center of gravity in a progressive direction beyond left and right.
This polling indicates that creating an alliance between progressive values and green politics could be a winning strategy for this [and future] election(s).
Roger Martin is Dean of the Rotman School of Management at the
University of Toronto
Amazon Page
Pre-order his forthcoming book
In response to the question: What does Wall Street have to change to produce better leaders, a different culture and a more long-term focus?
Forget about it. Don't even waste time thinking about it. The purpose
of Wall Street firms is to trade value for their own benefit not to
build value for the economy either short-term or long-term. While at
one point in its history, a non-trivial part of Wall Street's activity
involved financing the growth of American companies, that is now a
minor piece of its business. Wall Street is primarily engaged in
encouraging individuals and companies to trade value between one
another and tolling the parties for the service, and trading against
the outside economy for its own account.
Phi Beta Iota: This author not only gets it, he provides a solution. Wall Street, and the Fed, need to be creatively destroyed, and we need to restore bottom-up Human Scale locality-based business. Government “regulation” of financial crime is idiocy on top of illusion.
