Cheery Waves is the pseudonym for our first editor representing the marginalized voices of the five billion poor.
Contributing Editor: Cheery Waves
Authors & EditorsJournal: USNI/AFCEA Feature Stephen Carmel of Mersck Line Limited on Global Connectivity, Risk, Trade, and Security
02 China, 05 Energy, 10 Security, Commerce, Commercial Intelligence
Stephen Carmel is a world-class speaker with a truly compelling story to tell, and after learning about him from his appearance at the USNI/AFCEA Joint War Fighting Conference, we were deeply impressed.
Below we summarize the highlights from his speech, which we have put into a proper document with emphasis added throughout. This is one of the most useful intelligent commercial presentations to government we have every seen.
Highlights of his “prime” or most recent speech are below–although delivered in May, it did not hit critical mass in our circles until just now. Whatever “challenging tone” might be detected below is from Phi Beta Ioto–the speaker is a diplomat.
1) Complexity is the prime challenge. US Government is not trained, equipped, or organized to deal with complexity.
2) Global trade web has zero slack capacity and both the maritime and air webs depend in internal train and truck webs to keep going. US is $20 billion behind in the latter infrastructure.
3) Global trade web runs on computers and with the dependence on just in time inventory handling, has zero slack in the event of disruption, and the easiest as well as the most damaging disruptioin lies with computers and data that can be contaminated, manipulated, or simply destroyed.
4) USG completely missed China's deal with Russia to lock up the Siberian oil supply that is now bonded at the hip with the Chinese refining capacity that was part of the deal–this is a supply not subject to maritime interdiction.
Journal: No Record of DoD Responding to Congressional Mandate for Strategies, Plans, and Enhancements of the Separate Open Source Intelligence (OSINT) Discipline
History of Opposition, MilitaryIn the process of sorting through 20 years of documents pertaining to Open Source Intelligence (OSINT), all free to the public, we came across the original language from the Authorization Bill in 2006 that directed the Department of Defense (DoD) to respond with a report outlining how it would establish and enhance OSINT as a separate discipline, inclusive of strategies, plans, capabilities development and so on.
Lo and behold, it appears that DoD has not answered this requirement, which has been faxed to the Staff Directors of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligennce and the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence.
Follow the Frog to the 2006 posting of both the Congressional language and a short Defense News Daily report summarizing what the Authorizors want….
Journal: Agencies fail to make information sharing a priority
Government
By Jill R. Aitoro 07/30/2009
The Obama administration needs to restructure how interagency information-sharing initiatives are funded and implemented to encourage compliance by agencies that currently place a higher priority on their own missions, government and industry experts told House lawmakers Thursday.
“Differing missions, overlapping turf conflicts, resource constraints, bureaucratic inertia and agency tunnel vision still exist and impede information sharing,” said Ambassador Thomas McNamara, program manager of the Information Sharing Environment, a post within the Office of the Director of National Intelligence. ISE was created by Congress in 2004 to facilitate the sharing of terrorism information across all levels of government and the private sector.
. . . . . . .
The 2010 Intelligence Authorization Act, being debated in the House, includes a section that would move the ISE program manager position from the Office of the Director of National Intelligence to the Executive Office of the President, though President Obama stated that “such legislation is premature and could create undue administrative and managerial burdens by creating a completely new category of information for agencies to manage.”
+++++++Phi Beta Iota Editorial Comment+++++++
The Director of National Intelligence (DNI) means well, but this entire challenge of information sharing, like the challenge of global coverage, is about mind-set and culture. The secret world does not have it and never will. They have to be instructed and mandated and ultimately forced to give up half of their bloated budget that produces, “at best,” four percent of what the President needs to know and next to nothing at all for all of the substantive Congressional jurisdictions and the Cabinet officers they oversee.
Continue reading “Journal: Agencies fail to make information sharing a priority”
Journal: Rolfe Winkler on Buffet’s Betrayal
03 Economy, Commercial Intelligence
Phi Beta Iota Editorial Comment: Warren Buffet is a fraud–so is George Soros and all the other allegedly “for the people” individuals who ultimately put personal profit above the public good. Congress and the White House serve these people, not We the People, and that is the root cause of America's demise.
+++++++
When I was 14, Warren Buffett wrote me a letter.
It was a response to one I’d sent him, pitching an investment idea. For a kid interested in learning stocks, Buffett was a great role model. His investing style — diligent security analysis, finding competent management, patience — was immediately appealing.
Buffett was kind enough to respond to my letter, thanking me for it and inviting me to his company’s annual meeting. I was hooked. Today, Buffett remains famous for investing The Right Way. He even has a television cartoon in the works, which will groom the next generation of acolytes.
But it turns out much of the story is fiction. A good chunk of his fortune is dependent on taxpayer largess. Were it not for government bailouts, for which Buffett lobbied hard, many of his company’s stock holdings would have been wiped out.
. . . . . . .
But there’s nothing fair about Buffett getting a bailout, about exploiting the taxpaying public for his own gain. The naïve 14-year-olds among us thought he was better than this.
What would Ben Graham say?
Journal: Chuck Spinney Flags Israel’s Use of Economic Strangulation (A Form of Genocide or Other Atrocity)
06 Genocide, 07 Other Atrocities, Peace Intelligence
SANCTIMONEOUS HERESY: Right-wing Israelis demonstrate in Jabal Mukabber after hundreds ransacked the village in occupied East Jerusalem, destroying Palestinian property, March 2008. (Meged Gozani/Activestills)
A third uprising?
Gary M. Burge,The Electronic Intifada,3 August 2009
Gary M. Burge is professor of New Testament at Wheaton College in Chicago. He is author of Whose Land? Whose Promise? What Christians are not being told about Israel and the Palestinians (2003). He will soon release Jesus and the Land. How the New Testament Transformed “Holy Land” Theology.
I recently returned from the Holy Land after leading about 40 Presbyterians from Galilee to Jerusalem. This isn't new territory for me. I've been in the country many times leading students, working at archaeology digs, speaking at conferences, and occasionally taking a church such as this. And this time what I saw and heard was worrying.
Many important developments have taken place over the last six months. There was Israel's winter invasion of Gaza and a few months later, right-winger Benjamin Netanyahu became prime minister. Even recently US President Barack Obama has called for a change in America's posture toward Israel's settlements in the Occupied Palestinian Territories. For Middle East news junkies, these have been solid months. Continue reading “Journal: Chuck Spinney Flags Israel's Use of Economic Strangulation (A Form of Genocide or Other Atrocity)”
Journal: Worth a Look–UNIDIR on Learn, Adapt, Succeed
Peace Intelligence, Worth A Look
The United Nations Institute for Disarmament Research (UNIDIR) and its formal but free online publication, Diarmament Forum, the cover is shown to the left here, linking to the Forum's home page, is the model for the Journal of Public Intelligence.
Today we are creating a new section for the Journal, “Worth a Look,” which will point to relevant scholar-practitioner publications that make a contribution to the emerging and converging disciplines of Collective Intelligence, Public Intelligence, Cognitive Science, and Global from Local Public Administration, the latter the ultimate constituency for the Journal of Public Intelligence.
Below is the first page and link to the seven-page UNIDIR article, “Learn, adapt, succeed: potential lessons from the Ottawa and Oslo processes for other disarmament and arms control challenges.”
We note with special interest the importance of informal trust networks that are by, with, of, and BEYOND all bureaucratic entities.
