Category: Journal ISSN 1078-1935

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Journal: Ralph Peters on Stifling of General McChrystal

Ethics, Military
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O's Afghan woes

White House stifles general

September 3, 2009

The classified status report from Afghanistan by Gen. Stanley McChrystal was censored by the White House before its submission. As a result, it's all bun and no burger.

According to multiple (angry) sources, McChrystal — our top soldier on the ground — intended to ask for 28,000 more US troops. A presidential hatchet man directed the general not to make the request: Troop increases would be “addressed separately.”

. . . . . . .

Cooking the political books doesn't win wars. It didn't work for the Bush administration, and it won't work for Obama. We shouldn't waste another American life without a clear strategy our president will back with his full authority.

When the White House silences the generals in the field, it condemns our troops to the silence of the grave.

Phi Beta Iota: Old news but new anger.  The “hatchet man” was Secretary of Defense Robert Gates himself, calling an urgent meeting in Europe. read the full story from August as published in Foreign Policy.  Lies kill ones comrades.  When the Secretary of Defense is the point man for gutting his own general in the field, it is time for the Secretary to dig deep and either resign on principle, or tell the truth to the public and Congress.  The Obama Administration, and we specifically include General James Jones, USMC (Ret) is an extension of the ideological fantasy land that characterizes the two-party tyranny that represents Wall Street rather than the U.S. citizen, voter, and taxpayer.  It is high time we restored the integrity of our Cabinet officials, demanded integrity of our Congress and White House, and demanded reality-driven policy that is crafted with the best interests of the American people rather than Wall Street.  Zbigniew Brzezinski is behind most of this, and is long overdue for the same war criminal status that Henry Kissinger has enjoyed for the past decade, ever since being chased out of France by a warrant for his arrest.

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Journal: EarthGame–What DoD & NATO Want, What Can Be Done Faster, Better, Cheaper

Earth Intelligence, Methods & Process, Military, Peace Intelligence, Policies, Policy, Reform, Strategy, Technologies, Threats, Tools
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Sentient world: war games on the grandest scale

Mark Baard

23rd June 2007

Perhaps your real life is so rich you don't have time for another.

Even so, the US Department of Defense (DOD) may already be creating a copy of you in an alternate reality to see how long you can go without food or water, or how you will respond to televised propaganda.

The DOD is developing a parallel to Planet Earth, with billions of individual “nodes” to reflect every man, woman, and child this side of the dividing line between reality and AR.

Called the Sentient World Simulation (SWS), it will be a “synthetic mirror of the real world with automated continuous calibration with respect to current real-world information”, according to a concept paper for the project.

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A ‘Second Life’ for NATO Staffers

Katie Drummond

September 4, 2009

This isn’t the first time NATO has toyed with virtual training programs. In February, they requested a computerized replica of Afghanistan, complete with data on Afghan economics, politics and culture, to be used by war planners in decision-making considerations. And two years ago, the Navy asked for the same thing, but with Iraq as the targeted 3D nation.

Phi Beta Iota:  EarthGame by Medard Gabel does all this and more, for no more than $2 million a year, with one caveat: it is unaffordable and unachievable if DoD and NATO insist on everything being Top Secret.

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Worth a Look: Real-Time Intelligence (RTI)

Worth A Look

Although trademarked by some we ignore that since “real time intelligence” has been a term of art for over a decade.  Still, the gradual emergence of tools, tactics, and technigues for Real Time Intelligence (RTI) and Near Real Time Intelligence (NRTI) are starting to gain traction.

Much of what is called RTI or NRTI is not intelligence at all, merely real-time information, and the bridge has not been made to decision-support.  There are analytic packages and analytic algorithyms in the mix, but stove-piping still rules.

Continue reading “Worth a Look: Real-Time Intelligence (RTI)”

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Journal: Petition for Peace Engineering

02 Diplomacy, 10 Security, 11 Society, Civil Society, Ethics, Peace Intelligence, Reform, Strategy, Worth A Look
Petition for Peace
Petition for Peace

The average American is now in motion.  The Independent movement has reached critical mass, and the public recognition that everything the government is doing lacks a strategic analytic rationale as well as–in many cases–a moral rationale, is gathering force.

The below message captured our attention.  Note the “social engineering” of the military-industrial complex that has labored for decades to connect jobs to war, patronage to war,  bribes to war, high crimes and midemeanors (betrayal of the public trust) to war.  The call for social engineering for peace is, in our view, a strong signal that public intelligence is now becoming more commonplace, but we make the observation that the “lag time” between Congressional and Executive high crimes and misdemeanors, and the public discovery, analytis, outrage, and action, is still too great.  Public intelligence is going to have to do something secret intelligence cannot do: develop global REAL-TIME and NEAR-REAL-TIME information-sharing and sense-making, and do this across all ten high-level threats and all twelve policies that must be harmonized across all boundaries.

Continue reading “Journal: Petition for Peace Engineering”

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Worth a Look: The Infrastructurist

03 Economy, 07 Health, Worth A Look
Sewer Economics
Sewer Economics

Here is the bit that got our attention:

What’s the financial argument? You reap $7 dollars in economic rewards for every dollar you spend in basic sanitation. That makes it a really, really good investment. In the developing world, it may cost a couple hundred dollars to install a decent latrine, but think of what you save in terms of health costs and what you would otherwise lose when your workers are off with dysentery or whatever. And in developed world we’re learning that if you don’t continue investing in infrastructure you just going to pay a lot more later. It’s that simple.

Author Rose George
Author Rose George
Amazon Page
Amazon Page

We have added this site to the Righteous Site blogroll.  There are gems–and humor, throughout–that reflect a remarkable public intelligence in relation to national infrastructure.

What is clear is that “the numbers” that are presented to the public for any given public works project are those that favor the decision that has already been made, one based on corporate numbers that seek to spend public funds to create capabilities that extract profit from the public at public expense.

Public intelligence is how we get government back into the business of sserving the public rather than serving as the wealth transfer mechanism from individual taxation to corporate profiteering.

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Worth a Look: Independents Rising

Worth A Look
MUST WATCH VIDEO
MUST WATCH VIDEO

Jacqueline Salit led the independent movement that elected Bloomberg mayor of New York City.  She has gone on to create a nation-wide grass-roots movement with two thrusts: the Committee for a Unified Independent Party (CUIP), and as its primary objective, the enabling of Independent Voting, not only in the general election but in the primaries where this movement can credibly claim to have been the decisive factor in the marginal election of President Barack Obama (70% of the eligible voters did not vote for him–he won on a thin majority of those that did vote).

This “virtual” third party now claims 42% of all voters, a percentage that exceeds either of the two “main” parties.  Some reports suggest that the number of independent voters, now including estranged Republicans and fearful Democrats, actually comes closer to 60%.

If you care about America, if you want to understand the possibilities in America, please watch this video.  It is a foundation stone for the new house we must build, a house that does not distinguish between the mansion for Wall Street and the outhouse for the rest of us.  See also the master website, and an independent blogger, Nancy Hanks.

CUIP/Independent Web Site
CUIP/Independent Web Site
The Hankster
The Hankster
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Journal: Questions for supporters of the Democrat-Republican duopoly

Collective Intelligence, Ethics, Reform
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Questions for supporters of the

Democrat-Republican duopoly

August 31, 7:49 AM

Chad MacInnes

Orange County Independent Examiner

EXTRACT: The fact of the matter is that career politicians will say anything to get re-elected and will do anything to stay in power. This then becomes a classic dichotomy: the politicians say one thing, yet continue to act in ways anathema to what they repeatedly profess they stand for. Yet they are re-elected over and over again. Both Republicans and Democrats alike are equally guilty, and this becomes clear when one simply compares the rhetoric with what they actually do. With very few notable exceptions, Dr. Ron Paul comes to mind, there is no honor, no integrity, no intestinal fortitude among them. They are weak and spinless creatures driven only by an insatiable thirst for power and control, yet fancy themselves saviors, strong and powerful simply by their ability to manipulate the system and ignore the people. The self-serving Democrat-Republican duopoly is symptomatic of our sick republic, and the only medicine that will cure it is to remove this duopolistic tumor.

Phi Beta Iota: INTEGRITY.    The Average American has more common sense, decency, and integrity that most Graphic B JPEGserving in Washington as political appointees sworn to a partisan agenda, or as elected officials who have betrayed their constituencies by toeing to the party line.  Mr. MacInnes is articulating a broad “pox on both parties” that has been in motion since everyone realized that Al Gore sold out (Warren Christopher carried the offer) in 2000.

Now, having said that, we reiterate our view that President Barack Obama could be the George Washington of this century if he rejects the partisan hacks and the Wall Street hucksters that are looting the Treasury and avoiding responsibility.  All he has to do is demand the Electoral Reform Act of 2009 followed by the Smart Nation-Safe Nation Act of 2010, and we will have a Republic again–an informed, secure, sane, responsible Republic.
noble gold