Phi Beta Iota: Tip of the hat to Steven Aftergood and the Federation of American Scientists.
“Although information sharing might seem like the antithesis of secrecy, the term has come to be used to refer exclusively to sharing within the government, including state and local officials and certain selected private partners. Unlike “transparency,” which is a different policy portfolio, information sharing does not extend to members of the general public even in principle. To the contrary, it implies their exclusion– there is no need to “share” information that is generally available to all. And so “information sharing” is emerging as a modified form of official secrecy.”
By Peter Moskos and Stanford “Neill” Franklin The Washington Post, Monday, August 17, 2009
Undercover Baltimore police officer Dante Arthur was doing what he does well, arresting drug dealers, when he approached a group in January. What he didn't know was that one of suspects knew from a previous arrest that Arthur was police. Arthur was shot twice in the face. In the gunfight that ensued, Arthur's partner returned fire and shot one of the suspects, three of whom were later arrested.
Sometimes reality and fantasy collide in extraordinary ways. Below are four headlines and teaser editorial comments, click on the headlines to read the details, but the details do not really matter, here is the lunacy all together in one pot.
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.
Carmel 14 May 09
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.
“I mean, that's one of the things that's particularly troubling: This whole notion of radicalization of Americans,” Holder told ABC News during an interview in his SUV as his motorcade brought him from home to work. “Leaving this country and going to different parts of the world and then coming back, all, again, in aim of doing harm to the American people, is a great concern.”
Holder said the ever-changing threat of terror and the pressure to keep up with it weighs heavily on his mind as he tries to ensure that the government has done all it can to anticipate the moves of an unpredictable enemy.
“In some ways it's the most sobering part of the day,” Holder said of his morning intelligence briefing, in which he gets the latest report on the landscape of “the organizations, the people who are bound and determined to do harm to our nation.”
+++++++Phi Beta Iota Editorial Comment+++++++
NEWS FLASH FOR THE ATTORNEY GENERAL: There is a “Harvest of Rage” buidling up in America, and is is not from jihadists against the Nation, but rather normal, sober, average Americans full of common sense who are angry at the long list of high crimes and misdemeanors committed by a corrupt Congress and a White House that–regardless of occupant–represents Wall Street instead of Main Street.
The Watts riots by people of color will look like a kiss on the cheek if the white people of Middle America ever decide to march on New York and Washington. With all due respect to the good intentions of the Attorney General, he is out of touch with reality and with America. This is a Republic. The government is failing. It is time to fix it or abolish it. We favor the fix, and the fix is easy: the Electoral Reform Act of 2009.
American is going clinically insane because the federal government as a service of common concern to the United STATES of America is so busy transferring wealth from the individual taxpayer to the banks and special interests that it has failed to do its job: mind the public interest, nurture the public soul, and guard the public commonwealth.
Cheney and Rice equated informed patriotic objections to the elective war on Iraq at “treason”–General Tony Zinni in particular was tarred with that brush. Today the Obama Administration seems to equate opposition to its sophmoric efforts to do good while continuing to loot the Treasury for Goldman Sachs as “the radicalization of Americans.” Yes, America is being radicalized. The public intelligence question to be asked and answered is this: are We the People being radicalized by external or internal circumstances? Phi Beta Iota believes that our radicalization is caused by a government that has lost touch with the public it is meant to serve. Our good people trapped in a bad system have forgotten that their oath is to the Constitution, to defend America against all enemies, domestic as well as foreign, and that sometimes it is the integrity of the individual in the chain of command who remembers the Constitution, that prevents the abuse of power by political appointees who have been bought and paid for by Wall Street.
After spending a week traveling the frontline of the “war on terrorism” — from the aircraft carrier U.S.S. Ronald Reagan in the seas off Iran, to northern Iraq, to Afghanistan and into northwest Pakistan — I can comfortably report the following: The bad guys are losing.
Yes, the dominos you see falling in the Muslim world today are the extremist Islamist groups and governments. They have failed to persuade people by either their arguments or their performances in power that their puritanical versions of Islam are the answer. Having lost the argument, though, the radicals still hang on thanks to gun barrels and oil barrels — and they can for a while.
. . . . . . .
To the extent that the radical Islamists have any energy today, it comes not from the power of their ideas or examples of good governance, but by stoking sectarian feuds. In Afghanistan, the Taliban play on Pashtun nationalist grievances, and in Iraq, the Sunni jihadists draw energy from killing Shiites.
The only way to really dry up their support, though, is for the Arab and Muslim modernists to actually implement better ideas by producing less corrupt and more consensual governance, with better schools, more economic opportunities and a vision of Islam that is perceived as authentic yet embracing of modernity. That is where “our” allies in Egypt, Palestine, Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan have so consistently failed. Until that happens, the Islamist radicals will be bankrupt, but not out of business.
+++++++Phi Beta Iota Editorial Comment+++++++
Most readers will focus on the beginning of Friedman's story and completely miss the ending. What Friedman does not state that needs stating over and over again is that the U.S. taxpayer is being cheated by a foreign policy that substitutes technology for thinking, military sales for strategy, and convenient dictators for democracy. Until we have an Undersecretary of State for Democracy with one Assistant Secretary for those dictators that agree to a five-year exit strategy, another for those that do not; and a counterpart Undersecretary of Defense for Peace who can move beyond the lip service that Defense continues to give to Operations Other Than War (OOTW), Stabilization & Reconstructions (S&R), Humanitarian Assistance (HA), and the mother of all military strategies, Irregular Warfare properly defined as Waging Peace by All Means Possible, we will continue to betray the public interest at home as well as abroad.
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