Category: 09 Justice

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Marcus Aurelius: Dr. Robert Gates Finds His Integrity

07 Other Atrocities, 09 Justice, 10 Security, 11 Society, Corruption, Cultural Intelligence, DoD, Government, Military, Misinformation & Propaganda, Officers Call, Policy, Power Behind-the-Scenes/Special Interests, Secrecy & Politics of Secrecy
Marcus Aurelius

It's a real shame Gates could not connect to his integrity while in office.

Gates on D.C. lawmakers: ‘Oversized egos and undersized backbones'

Federal Times, December 14, 2011

Former Defense Secretary Robert Gates has called out lawmakers for their inability to compromise and develop bipartisan strategies and policies to “address our very real and serious problems.”

During a speech in which he called Washington a town of “oversized egos and undersized backbones,” Gates said “zero-sum politics and ideological siege warfare are the new order of the day.”

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Electronic Frontier Foundation: 2011 Secrecy Skyrockets

09 Justice, 10 Security, 11 Society, Corruption, Cultural Intelligence, Government, IO Deeds of War, IO Impotency, Officers Call, Secrecy & Politics of Secrecy

As the year draws to a close, EFF is looking back at the major trends influencing digital rights in 2011 and discussing where we are in the fight for a free expression, innovation, fair use, and privacy.

December 23, 2011 | By Trevor Timm

The government has been using its secrecy system in absurd ways for decades, but 2011 was particularly egregious. Here are a few examples:

  • Government report concludes the government classified 77 million documents in 2010, a 40% increase on the year before. The number of people with security clearances exceeded 4.2. million, more people than the city of Los Angeles.
  • Government tells Air Force families, including their kids, it’s illegal to read WikiLeaks. The month before, the Air Force barred its service members fighting abroad from reading the New York Times—the country’s Paper of Record.
  • Lawyers for Guantanamo detainees were barred from reading the WikiLeaks Guantanamo files, despite their contents being plastered on the front page of the New York Times.

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Marcus Aurelius: Private Manning Public Context

04 Inter-State Conflict, 07 Other Atrocities, 09 Justice, 10 Security, 11 Society, Corruption, Cultural Intelligence, Director of National Intelligence et al (IC), DoD, Government, IO Impotency, Military, Officers Call
Marcus Aurelius

Article  below, based on views of three or so retired senior military officers, two of them former Service TJAGs, takes an unfortunate tack on Manning's treachery.  Their contention is that command and systemic failures set conditions for Manning to compromise documents.  They assert that since he was  “juniorest guy in the office,” everybody but him was responsible for what he did.  I disagree.  Responsibility for security is absolutely an individual one.  Individuals sign general nondisclosure agreement SF-312 and other program-specific non-disclosure agreements as a priori conditions of access.   Rules are stated up front.  Personnel security clearances, training, and indoctrination are approaches used for our side.  Gates, guards, guns, and all technical computer stuff are oriented against adversaries.  Manning should have been able to work in a totally open storage area with hardcopy and softcopy documents of all classifications immediately at hand without anyone having to worry about him.  Further, as we know, decision to commit treason is a profoundly individual one, often facilitated and rationalized by adversaries through considerations of sex, money, ideology, compromise, ego, excitement, etc. Individuals are supposed to individually withstand and deflect such adversary facilitations and inducements.  So, in my mind, Manning is party at fault here.  If justice system cannot generate a capital conviction for him, then he should go way of Jonathan Pollard, Israeli agent within NIS — life in prison, throw away key,  No compassion on my part for either.

Private First Class Bradley E. Manning

Bradley Manning's WikiLeaks case: The larger issue

Josh Gerstein

POLITICO, 12/23/11

After 19 months in military prisons — much of the time in solitary confinement — Pfc. Bradley Manning finally emerged over the past week from the netherworld to which he has been confined since his arrest in the largest breach of classified information in U.S. history.

Seven days of hearings at Fort Meade, Md., produced what the prosecution called “overwhelming” evidence that the low-ranking Army intelligence analyst was the one who sent hundreds of thousands of military reports and diplomatic cables to the transparency website WikiLeaks.

But the hearing also produced equally compelling evidence of the larger issue that is often overlooked in discussions of Manning’s alleged misdeeds: the systematic breakdown in security that enabled a low-ranking enlisted man to abscond with a staggering quantity of classified Pentagonand State Department documents.

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Josh Kilbourn: Endgame – 2012 Forecast [W.E. Pollock]

01 Agriculture, 03 Economy, 07 Health, 09 Justice, 10 Security, 11 Society, 12 Water, Analysis, Budgets & Funding, Civil Society, Commerce, Corporations, Corruption, Cultural Intelligence, General Accountability Office, Government, IO Deeds of War, Money, Banks & Concentrated Wealth, Office of Management and Budget, Power Behind-the-Scenes/Special Interests, Threats, Waste (materials, food, etc)

We are going to move from denial to realization.  Physical world events will drive the process of realization. The primary trend is between stability and instability. We are moving from a multi-class system running from Super Elite to Unperson into a model of have's and have-nots, the unpersons. Labor has become a problem because less than 500 million are involved in life support activities thereby leaving more than 7 billion people very vulnerable to dependency (and treated as expendable containers). We are watching a redistribution process bound towards divestiture as more people become unpersons. Destruction of paper assets, debt collapse, bank failure, and war are all part of the redistribution process. With more unpeople, it becomes easier to reduce population through death and abuse. Our current economic structure has at least six trajectories of support; the physical world, human capital, transportation, technology, rule of law,and money.

Fukishima, Katrina, Gulf of Mexico oil spill — all examples of entire populations treated as “unpersons.”

See Also:

VIDEO: Fukushima – Total Cost (33)

W. E. Pollock Web Site

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John Bogle: ENOUGH – Speculation Bad Investment Good

03 Economy, 07 Other Atrocities, 09 Justice, 10 Transnational Crime, Civil Society, Commerce, Commercial Intelligence, Corporations, Corruption, Government, Money, Banks & Concentrated Wealth, Power Behind-the-Scenes/Special Interests

MARK JEWELL

Associated Press, 22 December 2011

EXTRACTS:

Bogle says he's paying close attention to tax policies he considers unfair, including one that's favorable to the fund industry and investors with taxable accounts. The top rate for dividends and long-term capital gains is historically low at 15 percent, as a result of the extension of Bush era tax cuts that Congress and President Barack Obama agreed to a year ago. In contrast, top earners pay 35 percent on regular income. He doesn't like that disparity.

. . . . . . .

As for capital gains, there ought to be some distinction between capital made by people who start businesses, and contribute value to society, and capital made by gamblers on Wall Street, some of whom win. Earned capital income should carry the regular dividend rate, but capital income gains by trading, and particularly short-term trading, should pay a higher tax, even than the present ordinary income rate.

. . . . . . .

Q: What's your take on the Occupy movement?

A: I'm happy to say that my current income puts me in the 99 percent group. So maybe I'm not so happy, I don't know.

This movement has brought to the surface some very serious problems in our country about disparities in opportunity and income. So many young people are having a terrible time getting a job.

Young people have great idealism, and the Occupy movement has been a bit unrealistic at times. So what? I can't imagine a worse America if our younger generation didn't have great idealism. I salute them for their enthusiasm, and their mission.

The negative side is that they just pushed too hard for too long. It's very difficult for any movement without any seeming leadership — other than a good idea — to have any sense of taste or judgment. Who's to say, ‘This is going too far'? In some places, it's just gone on too long, and it's been too disruptive. So I think it's good that we've been cleaning up the plazas where the Occupy movement set up.

Read full interview.

See Also (Steele Reviews in Each Case):

John Bogle, The Battle for the Soul of Capitalism

William Greider, The Soul of Capitalism: Opening Paths to a Moral Economy

Matt Taibbi, Griftopia: A Story of Bankers, Politicians, and the Most Audacious Power Grab in American History

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Marcus Aurelius: Hackers to Attack Feds Over Manning?

07 Other Atrocities, 09 Justice, 11 Society, Civil Society, Cultural Intelligence, DoD, Government, Law Enforcement, Media
Marcus Aurelius

Feds involved in Manning prosecution enter hackers' crosshairs

By Aliya Sternstein

NextGov, 12/20/2011

A government-hired forensics specialist and an Army investigating officer could face online backlash from WikiLeaks supporters who are unhappy with this week's prosecution of a U.S. soldier accused of releasing confidential government files to the anti-secrets website, a computer engineer affiliated with hacktivist group Anonymous said.

Read full article.

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John Steiner: Who Is the Government “For”?

03 Economy, 09 Justice, 11 Society, Civil Society, Commerce, Commercial Intelligence, Corruption, Cultural Intelligence, Government
John Steiner

The Defining Issue: Not Government's Size, But Who It's For

Robert Reich

Huffington Post, 19 December 2011

The defining political issue of 2012 won't be the government's size. It will be who government is for.

Americans have never much liked government. After all, the nation was conceived in a revolution against government.

But the surge of cynicism now engulfing America isn't about government's size. It's the growing perception that government isn't working for average people. It's for big business, Wall Street, and the very rich instead.

In a recent Pew Foundation poll, 77 percent of respondents said too much power is in the hands of a few rich people and corporations.

Read rest of article.