Policies – Page 498 – Public Intelligence Blog

JOURNAL: Bitcoin is getting past start-up cruft

A Bitcoin wallet ID for me: 18YYkAMVyZVt6gzpZvBEF5RgsJ7aT7a8Yh

Bitcoin, the digital currency system, is starting to mature. As is always the case, maturity isn't based on age (weak correlation) or success level. It's based on experience. More specifically, maturity is based on how many difficulties the system overcomes. The greater or more fiendish the difficulties successfully navigated, the more maturation gained.

Few systems have been through meat grinder of experience as much as bitcoin. From the media to pundits/experts to (the) government to hackers to criminals. Even a bubble! Everyone has taken a shot at it. Despite all of this, it is still trading at around ~ $4. The software is getting better (there is encryption built into the desktop wallet now). The core system remains intact and unbroken despite a huge number of attacks.

Most importantly, people are starting to learn how to handle real/tangible digital cash. Handling digital cash, particularly lots of it, is serious business. It needs to be protected and you can't leave it in the care of anybody you don't trust.

Essentially, bitcoin has repeatedly proven that digital currencies can work in the wild.

NOTE: The most interesting us of bitcoin to me? If it was used as a PLATFORM for private currencies or publicly traded securities rather than as simply as a currency.

2011/10/09

Marcus Aurelius: WSJ on Viet-Nam War – Lack of Integrity

04 Inter-State Conflict, 07 Other Atrocities, 08 Wild Cards, 10 Security, 11 Society, Budgets & Funding, Corruption, Counter-Oppression/Counter-Dictatorship Practices, Cultural Intelligence, DoD, Intelligence (government), IO Deeds of War, Military, Officers Call, Policy, Power Behind-the-Scenes/Special Interests, Strategy

Marcus-Aurelius-150x150 — Marcus Aurelius

Well, this is harsh w/r/t Westy…

Wall Street Journal
October 8, 2011
Pg. C5

Bookshelf

The War Over The Vietnam War

By Max Boot

Westmoreland: The General Who Lost Vietnam. By Lewis Sorley, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 416 pp., $30

September 2006. Violence levels are spiking in Iraq. Every day brings reports of more suicide bombings, more IEDs, more death and destruction. So bad has it gotten that the Washington Post reveals that a senior Marine intelligence officer has concluded “that the prospects for securing that country's western Anbar province are dim and that there is almost nothing the U.S. military can do to improve the political and social situation there.”

This was the situation when I was among a dozen conservative pundits escorted into the Oval Office for a chat with President George W. Bush. I asked him why he didn't change a strategy that was clearly failing. He replied that he had no intention of micromanaging the war like Lyndon Johnson, who was said to have personally picked bombing targets in Vietnam. This commander in chief vowed to respect the judgment of his chain of command.

Phi Beta Iota: Full text with added links below the line. This review and the book are largely crap. Viet-Nam was lost for two reasons: because all historical and indigenous influences were for the residents and against the occupiers; and because the US Government was corrupt and was in direct support of a Catholic mandarin and his sister who took corruption, torture, and exploitation of a Buddhist et all land to new heights. The review misses two of the most important books on the matter, one, Triumph Foresaken that supports the “we could have won” argument, the other, Who the Hell Are We Fighting? that makes it clear that the corruption of intelligence and the corruption of military and political planning were at the heart of America's failure in Viet-Nam. Westmoreland was not a bad man, but he represented–as most Army leaders do today–the orthodox, the West Point Protective Association, the Army above Republic, the “go along to get along,” and of course the toxic brew of “leadership” that is arrogant, inattentive, poorly educated, and not at all concerned about the welfare or their troops. In the US Army today, “education” is for show or ticket punching, not to actually learn anything useful to the future.

Full Text and Links below the Line.

Continue reading “Marcus Aurelius: WSJ on Viet-Nam War – Lack of Integrity”

2011/10/082011/10/19

Robert Steele: Trip Report – Occupy Wall Street 6 October 2011 – Second American Revolution is Real

11 Society, Blog Wisdom, Budgets & Funding, Civil Society, Commerce, Corporations, Corruption, Counter-Oppression/Counter-Dictatorship Practices, Cultural Intelligence, Ethics, Government, Hacking, InfoOps (IO), IO Deeds of Peace, IO Deeds of War, Methods & Process, Misinformation & Propaganda, Mobile, Money, Banks & Concentrated Wealth, Officers Call, Power Behind-the-Scenes/Special Interests, Secrecy & Politics of Secrecy, Strategy, Threats

steele smiling final — Robert David STEELE Vivas

I visited New York City 6-7 October 2011.

First I met with Alexa O'Brien, one of the brilliant minds behind U.S. Day of Rage and its focus on Electoral Reform and non-violence as an absolute. [My memo that Fox news still has not read is here.]

Although they are also focused on a Constitutional Convention, as Lawrence Lessig has been, I reiterated the point that Electoral Reform is the one thing that can be demanded today (no later than 6 November, one year prior to Election Day), with severe consequences for every elected person if Congress fails to pass Electoral Reform by President's Day (February 2012), to include recall or impeachment, and camp-outs at their offices and in public spaces near their homes through to Election Day 2012.

Photos and Additional Comments Below the Line

Continue reading “Robert Steele: Trip Report – Occupy Wall Street 6 October 2011 – Second American Revolution is Real”

2011/10/08

Marcus Aurelius: Romney Slams Obama, Postures At VMI

02 China, 06 Family, 07 Other Atrocities, 09 Justice, 10 Security, 11 Society, Civil Society, Corruption, Cultural Intelligence, IO Impotency

Romney Criticizes Obama at Military College

This morning, Mitt Romney used his foreign policy address at the Citadel in Charleston, South Carolina to criticize what he called the Obama administration's “feckless policies of the last three years.”

“I believe we are an exceptional country with a unique destiny and role in the world,” Romney said, with an audience of cadets sitting behind him. “Not exceptional, as the president has derisively said, in the way that the British think Great Britain is exceptional or the Greeks think Greece is exceptional. In Barack Obama’s profoundly mistaken view, there is nothing unique about the United States.”

Romney criticized the president on cutting the defense budget, as well. “I will reverse President Obama’s massive defense cuts,” he said. “I will begin reversing Obama-era cuts to national missile defense and prioritize the full deployment of a multilayered national ballistic missile defense system.”

Continue reading “Marcus Aurelius: Romney Slams Obama, Postures At VMI”

2011/10/07

Chuck Spinney: In new window Print all The Liquidation of al-Awlaqi – Droning Mindlessly Into an American Jihad

04 Inter-State Conflict, 05 Civil War, 07 Other Atrocities, 08 Wild Cards, 09 Terrorism, 10 Security, Corruption, Cultural Intelligence, Director of National Intelligence et al (IC), DoD, Government, IO Deeds of War, Law Enforcement, Military

Using the extra-judicial liquidation of Anwar al-Awlaqi as a point of departure, Patrick Seale provides very useful and important survey of the strategic and grand strategic implications of the expanding U.S. conflict in what now might be called the Yemen Theater of Operations (YTO) in what is rapidly mutating into a U.S. Jihad against the Islamic world. The United States is now in involved militarily in wars encompassing at least six theaters of operations in the Islamic world, including Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Yemen, Libya, and Somalia, with possible expansions into the Sahel and Nigeria, not to mention Iran and who knows where else.

Chuck Spinney
Badalona, Catalunya (part of Spain according to some)

Anwar al-Awlaqi, Yemen, and Obama’s War

by Patrick Seale

Agence Global, 4 Oct 2011

On Friday, 30 September, Yemen announced that a Hellfire missile fired from a CIA-operated drone had killed Shaykh Anwar al-Awlaqi, in the north of the country. His grief-stricken father, once a minister of agriculture in a Yemeni government, went to the scene to collect and bury the pieces of what remained of Anwar’s body. It was the seventh U.S. strike in Yemen this year.

Anwar al-Awlaqi was a virulent critic of American foreign policy in the Arab world, and a passionate advocate of al-Qaida’s form of Islamic jihad. He was also a U.S. citizen, born in New Mexico, with an engineering degree from Colorado State University. His internet sermons, delivered in fluent English, had a devoted following, especially among young Muslims in the West.

His killing inevitably aroused a storm of controversy in the United States about its legality. In an article in The National Interest, Paul R. Pillar, a former senior CIA officer now a university professor, described it as “essentially a long-range execution without judge, jury or publicly presented evidence.” This is a subject which must be left to the Americans to debate.

What are its probable consequences? The most obvious is that it is likely further to inflame some Muslims against the United States, drawing fresh recruits into the jihadist struggle. “Why kill him in this brutal, ugly way?” a member of his Awalik tribe was quoted as saying. “Killing him will not solve the Americans’ problem with al-Qaida. It will just increase its strength and sympathy in this region.”

A key question, therefore, is whether al-Qaida — including its Yemen-based offshoot, “Al-Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula” — is an organisation or a cause.

Read full article.

2011/10/062011/10/17

John Robb: The Pope of the Church of Capitalism / Capo of Government-Sanctioned Financial Terrorism

03 Economy, 07 Other Atrocities, 10 Transnational Crime, Blog Wisdom, Commerce, Commercial Intelligence, Corruption, Counter-Oppression/Counter-Dictatorship Practices, Government, IO Deeds of War

JOURNAL: The Pope of the Church of Capitalism

Let's step a bit outside of the day to day grind. I spent a bit of time watching the Chairman of the Federal Reserve “scold” Congress. This got my brain thinking a bit outside the box. So I'll share with you my thoughts.

The Chairman of the Federal Reserve is part:

Religious figure. The Pope of the Church of Capitalism. The leader of the Church. Final arbiter on the meaning of scripture (arcane economic indicators and economic papers). Is trained in ancient mysteries (economics). Has a council of Cardinals (the Fed board). He also issues indulgences (bailouts and free loans) to banks that he likes.
Royalty. A king of Capitalism. Surrounded by the noble houses of Goldman, JP Morgan, US Bank, and Citibank. Is trotted out to “stabilize” and “orient” government action. Protector of the privileges of nobility (a national/perpetual first night). Be-suited in the garb of royalty. Sometimes (as above) deigns to speak to the assembly of commoners.
Ideologue. General Secretary of the Capitalist Party. When he speaks, the party faithful in the markets listen. He ensures the purity of the ideology (Capitalism). Fights to expand the party's influence around the world. Has analysts devoted to watching/deciphering the actions of his Capitalist Politburo.

Bernanke testifies before congressional committee — Click on Image to Enlarge

Phi Beta Iota: More like the Capo of Government-Sanctioned Financial Terrorism. The Federal Reserve is neither Federal nor a Reserve, but rather a front for the New York banks that are in turn a front for a tiny cabal of financial families that have the full protection (genuflection) of the two political parties that have destroyed democracy to achieve a velvet form of financial facsicm. As the recent audit demonstrates, this organization is out of control.

Why Isn’t Wall Street in Jail? + US Fraud RECAP

Alessandro Politi: Need for Euro to Default As a Group, Nail the Banks and Restore Integrity of Global Economy (Full Text Online for Google Translate)

2011/10/052011/10/22

Robert Steele: Working Papers for NYC 6-7 Oct 2011

Advanced Cyber/IO, Blog Wisdom, Budgets & Funding, Civil Society, Collective Intelligence, Counter-Oppression/Counter-Dictatorship Practices, Cultural Intelligence, Ethics, Government, Hacking, InfoOps (IO), Methods & Process, Misinformation & Propaganda, Mobile, Money, Banks & Concentrated Wealth, Officers Call, Open Government, Policies, Politics of Science & Science of Politics, Power Behind-the-Scenes/Special Interests, Real Time, Reform, Secrecy & Politics of Secrecy, Serious Games, Strategy, Threats

TINY URL for this post:

http://tinyurl.com/OWS-Steele

Below are the working papers that have been posted for discussion in New York City, first with the Day of Rage team (it is neither a Day nor a Rage and it is all about electoral reform), then with the General Assembly at OccupyWallStreet, beginning with a handful of self-selected facilitators.

I will be driving a 1964 MGB, red in color, license VA MGB 64. If we do the human megaphone, it should be around 1700 (5 pm) Thursday or 1100 Friday.

The best context for understanding what I hope to accomplish is provided by Tom Atlee in his Tom Atlee: Occupation Catalytic Butterfly. My summary views are at Robert Steele on Russia TV: Occupy Wall Street & Electoral Reform, General Strike Needed?

My Interpretation of the Emerging Message:

CORRUPTION is the common enemy, both in government and in the private sector.

ELECTORAL REFORM is the singular demand.

SUNSHINE CABINET is the method.

INTEGRITY is the core value.

COMMONWEALTH RESTORED is the outcome.

Document Form

NYC A Message and Method One Page.doc
NYC B Electoral Reform Act 1 Page 9 Points 2.2.doc
NYC C Preconditions of Revolution in the USA Today.doc
NYC D Seven Promises to America.doc
NYC E Citizen in Search of Integrity.doc
NYC F Integral Government in a Box.doc

Online Full Text for Google Translate

Robert Steele: OccupyWallStreet Message and Method