Category: Policies

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Reference: The Hasan Slide Presentation

08 Wild Cards, 10 Security, Articles & Chapters, Cultural Intelligence, Military
Charles Cameron Analysis
Charles Cameron Analysis

Phi Beta Iota: Berto Jongman flagged this from the Small Wars Journal.  It is consistent with our own earlier diagnosis of Cognitive Dissonance, and we recommend it be read in its entirety.  At the link below can be found a link to the original slide show.  The author stresses the reasonable gravity of the conflict between being a Muslim and being asked to kill other Muslims, and while he avoids recommending a policy, we do not.  DoD has been culturally ignorant for too long.  It's time we brought both DoD human resource management and DoD counterintelligence into the 21st Century.  See also:

Worth a Look: Berto Jongman on Afghanistan, Al Qaeda, CIA Torture, and Maj Nidal Hasan’s Slide Show

Journal: Fort Hood Cognitive Dissonance Round-Up

Journal: Cognitive Dissonance, Military Suicides, and an Alternative Interpretation of the Fort Hood Deaths

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Journal: Goldman Sachs Five Strikes

03 Economy, Commerce, Commercial Intelligence, Ethics, Law Enforcement

Full Story Online
Full Story Online
Cody Willard Home
Cody Willard Home

GS a short? And five reasons we hate Goldman Sachs

Cody Willard      November 19, 2009

Here are five reasons why we want Goldman Sachs destroyed and buried so we can dance on its grave and why these crony apologists are wrong when they say that the “populist outrage at Goldman Sachs is misplaced”.

1. The AIG bailout was a covert bailout of Goldman and we want our  money back.

2. Goldman became a “financial holding company” after it became a  “bank holding company”after it realized it was going to be insolvent  even after it got Stephen Friedman to write them a $13 billion check from AIG funded with taxpayer money.

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Journal: Federal Financial Difficulties

03 Economy, 10 Transnational Crime, Budgets & Funding, Commerce, Commercial Intelligence, Ethics, Government, Reform

Wave of Debt Payments Facing U.S. Government

By EDMUND L. ANDREWS

WASHINGTON — The United States government is financing its more than trillion-dollar-a-year borrowing with i.o.u.’s on terms that seem too good to be true. But that happy situation, aided by ultralow interest rates, may not last much longer.   Treasury officials now face a trifecta of headaches: a mountain of new debt, a balloon of short-term borrowings that come due in the months ahead, and interest rates that are sure to climb back to normal as soon as the Federal Reserve decides that the emergency has passed.

Revisiting a Fed Waltz With A.I.G.

By GRETCHEN MORGENSON

‘A government report on the bailout of A.I.G. is must reading for taxpayers looking to know why the $182 billion “rescue” is the most troubling episode of the financial disaster.')   …  The Fed, under Mr. Geithner’s direction, caved in to A.I.G.’s counterparties, giving them 100 cents on the dollar for positions that would have been worth far less if A.I.G. had defaulted. Goldman Sachs, Merrill Lynch, Société Générale and other banks were in the group that got full value for their contracts when many others were accepting fire-sale prices.

By TOM RAUM (AP)

WASHINGTON — Suddenly the Federal Reserve is everybody's punching bag.  …  Strip the Fed of its bank regulation powers, some in Congress are demanding. Get probing audits of its behind-the-scenes operations, others say.

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Journal: UK Generals Turning on Politicians

04 Inter-State Conflict, 10 Security, Ethics, Government, Law Enforcement, Military, Peace Intelligence

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Full Story Online

Leaked documents reveal No 10 cover-up over Iraq invasion

• Inquiry to hear how Blair hid true intentions for war
• Military ‘ill-prepared' for aftermath of invasion

Military commanders are expected to tell the inquiry into the Iraq war, which opens on Tuesday, that the invasion was ill-conceived and that preparations were sabotaged by Tony Blair‘s government's attempts to mislead the public.

They were so shocked by the lack of preparation for the aftermath of the invasion that they believe members of the British and US governments at the time could be prosecuted for war crimes by breaching the duty outlined in the Geneva convention to safeguard civilians in a conflict, the Guardian has been told.

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Review: Common Sense–the Way Back

01 Poverty, 03 Economy, 11 Society, Civil Society, Collective Intelligence, Commercial Intelligence, Cultural Intelligence, Ethics, Government, Reform
Amazon Page
Amazon Page
5.0 out of 5 stars Patriotic Love and Common Sense For All
November 21, 2009
Felton Williamson, Jr.
By remarkable coincidence, Sarah Palin's new book, Going Rogue: An American Life just came out, jumped to the top of my ‘waiting to read” stack, and includes the phrase “Commonsense Conservative” is featured in that book. Combine it with Richard Branson's “Gaia Capitalism” and you have the makings of something special.

This book is short (123 pages), easy to read, and an inspiring patriotic labor of love, a gift to all of us who care deeply for American the Beautiful and are confused and/or angry about all that has been done “in our name” by the festering cesspool of Washington-based politicians and senior bureaucrats who live to claim budget share (inputs) rather than deliver public service (outputs).

The author provides the single best, most complete, and most sensible demarche against EARMARKS that I have ever seen. Included are eight illustrations and I will list them here because they capture the essence of this book's common sense:

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Worth a Look: Berto Jongman on Afghanistan, Al Qaeda, CIA Torture, and Maj Nidal Hasan’s Slide Show

08 Wild Cards, 09 Terrorism, 10 Security, 11 Society, Analysis, Cultural Intelligence, Government, Military, Peace Intelligence, Worth A Look
Berto Jongman
Berto Jongman

Researcher Berto Jongman recommends….

Poverty and unemployment fuel the conflict according to 70% of Afghans, new Oxfam research shows

Seventy per cent of Afghans surveyed see poverty and unemployment as the major cause of the conflict in their country, according to new research by international aid agency Oxfam and a group of Afghan organisations. Ordinary Afghans blame government weakness and corruption as the second most important factor behind the fighting, with the Taliban coming third, followed by interference by neighboring countries.

200 Web Sites Spread Al Qaeda's Message In English

Reassessing the Evolving al Qaeda Threat to the Homeland: Testimony of Peter Bergen Before the House Homeland Security Committee, Subcommittee on Intelligence, Information Sharing and Terrorism Risk Assessment

Al Qaeda today no longer poses a direct national security threat to the United States itself, but rather poses a second-order threat in which the worst case scenario would be an al Qaeda-trained or -inspired terrorist managing to pull off an attack on the scale of something in between the 1993 Trade Center attack, which killed six, and the Oklahoma City bombing of 1995, which killed 168.

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Journal: U.S. Air Force–Remote from War & Reality

10 Security, Collective Intelligence, Methods & Process, Military, Peace Intelligence, Technologies

Full Article Online
Full Article Online

Unmanned limits:

Robotic systems can’t replace a pilot’s gut instinct

BY COL. JAMES JINNETTE, USAF

Unmanned combat systems have fundamental limitations that can make their technology a war-losing proposition. These limitations involve network vulnerabilities, release consent judgment and, most importantly, creative capacity during air combat and close air support (CAS) missions. Although futurists might assume these problems away with grand ideas of technologies yet to be developed, during the next few decades these limitations will remain critical constraints on our ability to provide airpower in the joint fight.

AIR FORCE COL. JAMES JINNETTE is director of the Air Force Element at the Army Command and General Staff College at Fort Leavenworth, Kan., and a recent Army War College graduate. Prior to his current posting, Jinnette was an F-15E squadron commander. He has completed three close air support deployments in Iraq and Afghanistan.

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