11 Society – Page 316 – Public Intelligence Blog

2010/12/202010/12/20

Journal: Ron Paul C-SPAN’s Newsmakers + Ron Paul RECAP

03 Economy, 07 Other Atrocities, 11 Society, Budgets & Funding, Collaboration Zones, Communities of Practice, Corporations, Ethics, Money, Banks & Concentrated Wealth, Power Behind-the-Scenes/Special Interests, Secrecy & Politics of Secrecy

Focus on tax package, Republican future, focus on Federal Reserve and oversight if not termination of the Federal Reserve. Focus on danger of central economic planning. Do not attack individuals, but rather the “system.” It's going to get a lot worse. Need more transparency. Everything Fed does is secret and they have a budget bigger than US Congress. They bail out the insiders, not America. Bad economics and not legal under the Constitution. He is pressed hard by interviewers on bubbles existing before the Fed. You pay the price of SHORTER recessions. The debt is liquidated. Today our whole goal is to perpetuate the mistakes. Only thing worse than the Fed would be a “One World” currency. Explicit prohibition against printing money (applies to BOTH the Fed and to Congress). What is really at issue here is NOT the Fed, but rather the role of government in the eyes of the people. Stopping the Fed stops the US Government from being a world policeman and a regulator of our lives and the world.

C-SPAN VIDEO (31.:05) “Newsmakers” Interview of Ron Paul

Books by Ron Paul

Review: The Revolution–A Manifesto . . . . . . .Review: A Foreign Policy of Freedom–Peace, Commerce, and Honest Friendship (Paperback). . . . .End the Fed . . . . . . .Liberty Defined: The 50 Urgent Issues That Affect Our Freedom . . . . . . .Pillars of Prosperity . . . . . Meltdown: A Free-Market Look at Why the Stock Market Collapsed, the Economy Tanked, and Government Bailouts Will Make Things Worse. . . . .Ron Paul Speaks. . . . . .Case for Gold: A Minority Report of the United State Gold Commission. . . . . .Mises and Austrian Economics: A Personal View

2010/12/202010/12/20

Journal: Near-Term Demise of Private Military Contractors

10 Security, 11 Society, Commerce, Corruption, Cultural Intelligence, Government, IO Multinational, Military, Officers Call, Peace Intelligence

Former Blackwater Bought By Investment Group

by The Associated Press

RALEIGH, N.C. December 17, 2010, 10:38 am ET

An investment group with ties to the founder of the company formerly known as Blackwater announced Friday that it has bought the security firm, which was heavily criticized for its contractors' actions in Iraq.

USTC Holdings said in a statement that the acquisition of the company now called Xe Services includes its training facility in North Carolina.

Terms of the deal were not disclosed. But the statement said owner and founder Erik Prince will no longer have an equity stake and no longer be involved in Xe's management or operations. The company will be managed by a board appointed by the equity holders and will include independent, unaffiliated directors, the statement said.

The ownership group is led by two private equity firms, including New York-based Forte Capital Advisors. Forte managing partner Jason DeYonker has been a longtime financial adviser to Prince, helping him expand the Moyock, N.C., training grounds and negotiating Blackwater's first training contracts with the U.S. government.

“The future of this industry belongs to those companies with the highest standards of governance, transparency, and performance,” DeYonker said.

Read rest of article (includes photos)…

Phi Beta Iota: Winston Churchill is known for saying Americans always do the right thing, they just try everything else first. Similarly, Russell Ackoff is known for saying that we have to stop doing the wrong things righter, and instead do the right thing. Private Military Contractors (PMC) are the wrong thing! Multinational hybrid task forces are the right thing–cheaper, faster, better in all respects. All we need to bring is integrity and intelligence (decision-support). PMC's loot our own highly qualified human resources; cheat the taxpayer twice over (the government does it once first by hiring them in the first place); and are one step short of air dropping liquid feces over an entire area of responsibility (AOR). Not cool at all. Everyone means well, but this is about as dumb as it gets on all levels of thinking.

2010/12/192010/12/19

Journal: US Southern Command New “Campus”

04 Inter-State Conflict, 10 Security, 11 Society, Methods & Process, Military

Marcus-Aurelius-150x150 — Marcus Aurelius Recommends

For those of us who served at Quarry Heights….

….and shared the one outdoors faucet to “bathe” after noon hour PT!

Miami Herald

December 18, 2010

Southern Command Opens New HQ

Military brass and local dignitaries cut the ribbon on the Pentagon's new campus-style Southern Command headquarters.

By Carol Rosenberg

The Air Force staged an F-16 flyover. A Navy chaplain declared it a place of “justice” and “peace.” And military brass joined with local leaders Friday to officially open the Pentagon's $402 million state-of-the-art Southern Command headquarters in Doral.

The new hub for military and diplomatic operations in Latin America and the Caribbean has been years in the making, noted a succession of speakers.

Some thanked special guest Archbishop Thomas Wenski for lining up picture-perfect weather for the event, attended by several hundred guests.

Others paid tribute to former Gov. Jeb Bush and the South Florida Congressional delegation (none present), for lining up the finances and 55 acres of state-leased land for the Category 5 hurricane-proof facility.

It has a maze of specially secured offices, built next to the 13-year-old original building, plus a gym, small clinic and commissary. It also has a 200-seat auditorium in a structure called the Conference Center of The Americas, with technology to enable multilingual meetings that bring together military officers from the region.

Featured speaker Adm. James Stavridis, the previous Southcom chief, came from his current post as Supreme Allied Commander of Europe to declare the new facility a place of “partnership” and “promise.”

About 2,300 people work there, mostly members of the U.S. military; other U.S. government agencies and Latin American nations also send military and civilian liaisons to the facility.

Continue reading “Journal: US Southern Command New “Campus””

2010/12/182010/12/18

Journal: Congress Welcomes Open Gay Military…

11 Society, Cultural Intelligence, Military, YouTube

Writing very carefully as a private citizen, IMHO, this is bad news for both the military Services and the Nation. Congress has not served us well. Nor, it appears, second below, will POTUS.

Congress Overturns Military Ban of Gays Serving Openly, Sends Bill to Obama's Desk

Published December 18, 2010 | FoxNews.com

WASHINGTON — In a landmark vote, the Senate on Saturday ended the Clinton-era ban on gays serving openly in the military, marking a major triumph for President Obama, liberals and the gay community.

The final vote to end the Pentagon's 1993 “don't ask, don't tell” policy was 65-31, drawing support from eight Republicans.

The bill now goes to the White House for Obama's signature. He is expected to sign the bill into law next week, a senior White House aide told Fox News.

The White House Blog

The President on the Don't Ask, Don't Tell Repeal Act of 2010: “An Historic Step”

Phi Beta Iota: An enlightened Administration would have done a much better job of Information Operations (IO) within the military and within society, and would not be ramming this change down everyone's throat for partisan gain as is so obvious. This is, like WikiLeaks, a distractor from the fact that the Administration continues to endorse and protect the US fraud tri-fecta: mortgage clearinghouse fraud, Wall Street derivatives fraud, and Federal Reserve lending fraud. Having said that, and being of a light green Marine persuasion holding dark green Marines in the deepest regard, the bottom line is that sexual inclination is genetic diversity in action–it is not a choice, it is a fact. It has operational implications–but the reality is that there are thousands if not tens of thousands homosexual men and lesbian women now in service or retired–and on balance, as a generic collective, we across Phi Beta Iota see this as similar to the racial integration of the military in times past. It's a fact of life, society needs to get a grip, the military can help. Gays and lesbians are if anything much more culturally astute than those that fear them, it is highly unlikely any one of them will over-step their bounds within the well-ordered military.

John McCain's ‘Don't Ask, Don't Tell' Last Stand

Gates: Despite Senate Action, DADT Still The Law

Jason Linkins: “Don't Ask Don't Tell” Repeal: This Day Has Finally Come

Lady Gaga gets heads up from Reid on DADT repeal

2010/12/182010/12/18

Journal: Understanding Iran…and the future of IO

02 Diplomacy, 05 Energy, 10 Security, 11 Society, 12 Water, Communities of Practice, Cultural Intelligence, IO Multinational, IO Sense-Making, Methods & Process, Officers Call, Peace Intelligence, Strategy, Threats

Stakelbeck on Terror | Inside Iran's Revolutionary Guards

CBN (Christian Broadcast Network), 14 December 2010

On this week's special edition of Stakelbeck on Terror, CBN News goes inside Iran's fearsome Revolutionary Guards Corps with Reza Khalili, a former member who worked undercover for the CIA to bring down the Iranian regime.

The Revolutionary Guards Corps is the most powerful and influential force behind Iran's secretive and radical regime.

Over the past 30 years, its structure has been nearly impossible for Western intelligence agencies to penetrate. Yet, Khalili put his life on the line to gather sensitive information for the CIA about the inner workings of the Iranian regime.

Watch as he shares his story in an exclusive interview with Stakelbeck on Terror. Khalili also wrote about the experience in his book,

A Time to Betray.

Because of the nature of his work, Khalili is forced to disguise his identity and alter his voice for safety reasons.

Visit article to view an extremely thoughtful interview.

Phi Beta Iota: There is a remarkable coincidence of message between this specific witness/author and the work in the 1990's of Steve Emerson, whose 1994 PBS video on the domestic threat exposed both the ignorance of the US Government about what was going on within the US homeland, and the naivete of the US Government with respect to intentions. Now we are seeing a persistent ignorance at the highest levels of the deeply-rooted messianic nature of the Iranian regime, a persistent naivete of the deep corruption within the arab countries as well as Israel, a persistent and blissfully self-destructive refusal to embrace Turkey as a a stabilizing Islamic power….and on and on and on. The US Government is, in one word, IGNORANT with arrogance driving incoherence rooted in ideological naivete. Iran (and China) should be the focus on a 360 degree “whole of government” Information Operations (IO) campaign intended to explore and then develop concepts, doctrine, plans, programs, and budget for fully integrated intelligence, information operations, operations support to multinational hybrid task forces, and communications. The problem that we see immediately, apart from the US Government being incompetent–not trained, equipped nor organized for inter-agency or multinational operations–is that there is severe confusion, even denial, about where cyber starts and stops. Cyber is not about bits and bytes running through computers. It is about the mind of man–the mind of entire cultures, tribes, and regions. In that context, cyber should be the “driver” for all kinetic plans, programs, and budgets, by dictate with the US Government and by use of shared information and shared intelligence (decision-support) across all eight tribes and all other nations both allied and not.

21 Aug Odierno weighs in on Iraq's immediate future, Iran's intentions

30 Mar Iran's Intentions Are Clear

03 Feb Obama Carries Forward Carter’s Failed Iran Policy

2010/12/182010/12/18

Journal: History is repeating itself in Afghanistan

05 Civil War, 07 Other Atrocities, 08 Wild Cards, 10 Security, 11 Society, Corruption, Government, IO Multinational, Military, Officers Call, Peace Intelligence

editor spinney time — Chuck Spinney Recommends...

History is repeating itself in Afghanistan

One hears again and again Afghans say that the Taliban may not be liked but that the US is distrusted, even hated

Patrick Cockburn – The Independent 18/12/10

During the mid-1960s, America's goal during a crucial stage in the Vietnam war was to defeat the enemy militarily. But it had no realistic political strategy to underpin the goal, and it was this which ultimately led to failure.

America's strategy in Afghanistan is now suffering from a similar weakness. Barack Obama made the edgy claim this week that the US army is stabilising the military situation, but neither he nor his national security advisers show any signs of understanding the speed at which, politically, the US is losing ground.

Again and again in Kabul one hears Afghans say that the Taliban may not be liked, but that the Afghan government and its US allies are increasingly distrusted, even hated, by the mass of the population.

2010/12/182010/12/18

Journal: 12,000+ Killed in Mexican-American Drug War

03 Economy, 04 Inter-State Conflict, 05 Civil War, 07 Other Atrocities, 10 Security, 10 Transnational Crime, 11 Society, Corruption, Cultural Intelligence, Government, IO Multinational, IO Sense-Making, Law Enforcement, Military, Peace Intelligence

30,000 killed in Mexico’s drug violence since 2006 (AP)

Mexico said Thursday that more than 30,000 people have been killed in drug violence since President Felipe Calderon launched a crackdown against cartels in late 2006.

The government said the violent La Familia cartel in western Mexico has been “systematically weakened” by recent arrests and deaths of leading members of the gang.

More than 12,000 killed in Mexican drug war this year, officials say (Los Angeles Times)

Forensic workers carry a body inside a body bag that was found at a clandestine grave in the town of Asencion, near the northern border city of Ciudad Juarez, Mexico, Saturday Dec. 11, 2010. At least 5 bodies have been found in three separate clandestine graves found in the site. (AP Photo/Raymundo Ruiz)

Phi Beta Iota: Both Mexico and the USA are “unintelligent” countries lacking in strategic analytics able to clearly demonstrate “cause and effect.” If they were “smart nations” as we have been advocating since 1995, marijuana would have been legalized long ago, corruption among local officials squelched, pay and training for the police substantially increased….and so on. Everything is connected. For example, the weapons do not really come from US handgun stores–they come from the Guatemalan military that sells entire shipments of “old” weapons provided to the US, and then tells the US the weapons were destroyed. The serial numbers on the captured weapons tell the truth. Until nations learn to think honestly and holistically, any single flaw can be fatal, and multiple flaws will interact in unanticipated and increasingly costly ways. In the USA, crime runs from the border to Wall Street, where drug money laundering has long been known to be a major source of liquidity. Politicians in both countries are paid to be anemic in their thinking and ineffective in their duty to the public. Under these circumstances, neither law enforcement nor the military can be effective. Integrity is the missing factor.