Journal: CIA Veteran Rings Bell on Iraq–Way Too Late…

10 Security, 11 Society, Civil Society, Collective Intelligence, Corruption, Cultural Intelligence, Ethics, Intelligence (government), Officers Call, Peace Intelligence, Power Behind-the-Scenes/Special Interests, Reform

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Iraq: Time to Ring the Bell

by Howard P. Hart

27 August 2010

Many years ago I attended a series of Headquarters briefings for out-going CIA Chiefs of Station. Our main speaker was Richard Helms, then the Agency’s Director and one of the lions of American foreign policy in the 1960’s and 70’s. A man who was subsequently crucified in the Nixon catastrophe. Dick was essentially giving us our instructions, and in my mind his most telling directive was the quiet statement: “Ring the Bell.” Telling us to sing out when we apprehended a major disaster in the offing.

It’s time to ring the bell on Iraq.

Briefly put, in a matter of months Iran will emerge the unchallenged military and economic power dominating the area from Lebanon to Pakistan. It will control Iraq, and be in a position to shut off all oil supplies from the Persian Gulf. It will be free to provide extensive assistance to the Taliban in Afghanistan, thus ensuring a NATO defeat in that country. It will be in a position to provide crucial support to radical Islamic elements in Pakistan – which may well result in the collapse of that already shaky nuclear-armed government. It will be free to radically increase its support to a variety of terrorist organizations targeting the US. And, in conjunction with well-armed radical Palestinian forces that already exist on Israel's borders, it will pose the greatest threat ever faced by Israel. A threat that I do not believe Israel could survive without direct US military intervention.

READ THE BALANCE OF THE PIECE BY THIS CIA VETERAN

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2010/09/042010/09/04

Journal: End Poverty to End Population Growth

01 Poverty, 03 Economy, 06 Family, 09 Justice, 10 Security, Earth Intelligence

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Visualizing Global Population Growth

Hans Rosling

Posted: Sep 4, 2010

The world’s population will grow to 9 billion over the next 50 years — and only by raising the living standards of the poorest can we check population growth.

This is the paradoxical answer that Hans Rosling unveils at TED@Cannes using colorful new data display technology (you’ll see).

Watch the 10 Minute Video from TED: Hans Rosling on global population growth

Phi Beta Iota: This is consistent with the report of the UN High-Level Threat Panel on Threats, Challenges, and Change, which identified POVERTY as the top threat to humanity, in part because it spawns everything else including Infectious Disease (#2), Environmental Degradation (#3, the poor doing more damage than all the corporations on the planet), and so on. See also:

Review: A More Secure World–Our Shared Responsibility–Report of the Secretary-General’s High-level Panel on Threats, Challenges and Change
Review: Out of Poverty: What Works When Traditional Approaches Fail
Design for the Other 90% Exhibit + “Micro-Giving” Global Needs Index to Connect Rich to Poor/Fullfill Global-to-Local Requests
Review: Building Social Business–The New Kind of Capitalism that Serves Humanity’s Most Pressing Needs
Review: The Fortune at the Bottom of the Pyramid–Eradicating Poverty Through Profits (Hardcover)
Review: Revolutionary Wealth (Hardcover)
Review: State of the World 2010–Transforming Cultures–From Consumerism to Sustainability
Review: Corruption and Anti-Corruption–An Applied Philosophical Approach
Reference: World Brain Institute & Global Game
Search: Strategic Analytic Model

2010/09/032010/09/03

Journal: CIA Out, JSOC In for Covert Operations–Meanwhile, CIA PAO Touts CIA as a 9-to-5 Job

07 Other Atrocities, 09 Justice, 10 Security, Government, Military

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Shhhhhh! JSOC is Hiring Interrogators and Covert Operatives for ‘Special Access Programs'

Jeremy Scahill | August 25, 2010

What has become abundantly clear is that the Obama administration has taken the Bush-era doctrine of the world as a battlefield and run with it. US special forces are now operating in seventy-five countries across the globe—up from sixty under Bush—and special operations sources say Obama is a major fan of the work of JSOC and other special operations forces.

Full Story Online at The Nation

Working at the CIA: Fact or Fiction

Despite its portrayal in the movies, working at the Central Intelligence Agency isn’t glamour and danger all the time. In fact, for most officers, it’s more like a normal 9-to-5 job. This story is the first in a series that will debunk certain myths and misperceptions about working at the CIA.

Meet Brad, Chris, Larry, and Eleanor — all experienced CIA officers with time spent overseas. In this article, they’ll share their insights and do their best to debunk myths about being an Agency employee.

FULL STORY at CIA Web Site

Phi Beta Iota: Just shaking our head. CIA, 9 to 5. The other observation is that unilateral anything is bad, bad, bad. We should be creating multinational regional stations and using host country case officers on the street, not muscle-bound guys whose idea of cover clothing is shorts and corafam shoes.

2010/09/022010/09/02

Journal: Twitter Breaks the News

09 Justice, 10 Security, Civil Society, Law Enforcement, Media, Methods & Process, Tools

Full Story Online

Twitter breaks story on Discovery Channel gunman James Lee

By Paul Farhi

Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, September 2, 2010

The news broke around 1 p.m. with a few sketchy details. Gunman. Shots. Hostages. Discovery building.

Within minutes, there were photos, including an astonishing one of a man clad in shorts, carrying a rifle and stalking through what looked like an office courtyard.

The news of a gunman at the Discovery Channel's headquarters in Silver Spring indeed traveled fast on Wednesday, but none of it came through radio, TV or newspaper Web sites, at least not at first. As it has with other breaking news events — the landing of a jet on the Hudson River in 2009, the 2008 massacre in Mumbai — the story unfolded first in hiccupping fits and starts on Twitter, the much-hyped micro-blogging service that has turned millions of people into worldwide gossips, opinion-mongers and amateur news reporters.

2010/09/022010/09/02

Google, MSoft, IBM, HP, Oracle, Intel (chips), National Security and Perceived Internet Threats

04 Education, 04 Inter-State Conflict, 10 Security, Commerce, Computer/online security, Cyberscams, malware, spam, Government, Military, Misinformation & Propaganda, Secrecy & Politics of Secrecy, Technologies

U.S. Strategy: Control The World By Controlling The Internet
A Chinese Perspective, by Chen Baoguo, August 24, 2010
In May 2009, Microsoft announced on its website that they would turn off the Windows Live Messenger service for Cuba, Syria, Iran, Sudan and North Korea, in accordance with US legislation. In January 2010, Google, the company which owns the largest Internet information resources, declared that in order to establish a more open Internet environment, they had to abandon the Chinese market.What is even more worrying is that Senator Joseph Lieberman, chairman of US Homeland Security Committee, recently presented to the US Senate a bill titled “Protecting Cyberspace as a National Asset. “To control the world by controlling the Internet has been a dominant strategy of the US.From the network infrastructure protection of the Clinton era to the network anti-terrorism of the Bush era and to the “network deterrence” of the Obama era, the national information security strategy of the US has evolved from a preventative strategy to a preemptive one.Meanwhile, the methodology has moved from trying to control Internet hardware to control of Internet content.
Video: “The cyber-threat has been grossly exaggerated” debate between Marc Rotenberg & Bruce Schneier VERSUS Mike McConnell & Jonathan Zittrain
China Cyber-army Talk Pulled from Black Hat
By: Brian Prince 2010-07-15
A presentation on Chinese state-sponsored hacking has been pulled from the Black Hat security conference due to pressure from the Taiwanese government. The talk, titled “The Chinese Cyber Army: An Archaeological Study from 2001 to 2010,” was to be held by Wayne Huang, CTO of Web application security firm Armorize Technologies.

2010/08/27

Secrecy News Headlines–Non-Coercive Interviewing

02 China, 03 Economy, 10 Security, Ethics, Geospatial, Strategy, True Cost

Secrecy News

**      DNI ADVISORS FAVOR NON-COERCIVE “INTELLIGENCE INTERVIEWING”
**      RARE EARTH ELEMENTS: THE GLOBAL SUPPLY CHAIN (CRS)
**      THE TWILIGHT OF THE BOMBS

Extract on Torture:

The ISB study notably dissected the “ticking time bomb” scenario that is often portrayed in television thrillers (and which has “captured the public imagination”). The authors patiently explained why that hypothetical scenario is not a sensible guide to interrogation policy or a justification for torture. Moral considerations aside, the ISB report said, coercive interrogation may produce unreliable results, foster increased resistance, and preclude the discovery of unsuspected intelligence information of value (pp. 40-42).

Extract on Rare Earths Global Supply Chain:

Rare earth elements — of which there are 17, including the 15 lanthanides plus yttrium and scandium — are needed in many industrial and national security applications, from flat panel displays to jet fighter engines. Yet there are foreseeable stresses on the national and global supply of these materials. “The United States was once self-reliant in domestically produced [rare earth elements], but over the past 15 years has become 100% reliant on imports, primarily from China,” a new report (pdf) from the Congressional Research Service observes. “The dominance of China as a single or dominant supplier […] is a cause for concern because of China’s growing internal demand for its [own rare earth elements],” the report said.

2010/08/27

Journal: Pentagon Flails in Defending Cyberspace

03 Economy, 04 Education, 10 Security, 11 Society, Corruption, IO Multinational, IO Secrets, Military, Officers Call

Beyond belief, but here it is: the “official” explanation of why we are going to waste 12 billion dollars a year on contractors without a clue (vapor-ware). There is zero return on investment here for the taxpayer, only for the contractors and Congress, neither of which will be held accountable for fraud, waste, and abuse.

September/October 2010

ESSAY

Defending a New Domain

The Pentagon's Cyberstrategy

William J. Lynn III
WILLIAM J. LYNN III is U.S. Deputy Secretary of Defense.

In 2008, the U.S. Department of Defense suffered a significant compromise of its classified military computer networks. It began when an infected flash drive was inserted into a U.S. military laptop at a base in the Middle East. The flash drive's malicious computer code, placed there by a foreign intelligence agency, uploaded itself onto a network run by the U.S. Central Command. That code spread undetected on both classified and unclassified systems, establishing what amounted to a digital beachhead, from which data could be transferred to servers under foreign control. It was a network administrator's worst fear: a rogue program operating silently, poised to deliver operational plans into the hands of an unknown adversary.

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