Articles & Chapters – Page 12 – Public Intelligence Blog

2011/08/02

Chuck Spinney: Israeli Ethnic Cleansing of the Bedouin

05 Civil War, 06 Genocide, 07 Other Atrocities, 08 Wild Cards, 10 Security, 11 Society, Articles & Chapters, Civil Society, Corruption, Cultural Intelligence, Government, IO Deeds of War, Military

Palestinians fear for ancient West Bank water source

By Tom Perry, Reuters

RASHAYIDA, West Bank | Thu Jul 28, 2011 6:43am EDT

(Reuters) – – Hewn from rock, the cavernous cisterns which dot the desert beyond Bethlehem have for centuries harvested winter rain to provide shepherds and their flocks with water through summer.

Under a baking sun, an elderly Bedouin explains how cisterns he remembers from childhood, many of them restored to full working order in the last few years, are once again helping his goat-herding community to survive.

That, he concludes, is why the Israeli authorities who control the West Bank have demolished at least three in the area since November.

“Maybe they are doing this to make us leave. We will not leave,” said Falah Hedawa, 64, sitting on cushions in his tent home pitched in the hills that slope down to the Dead Sea.

Out into the desert, a stagnant pool marked the spot where one of the cisterns, chiseled out of a hillside, had stood until its recent demolition. A mud trail on the otherwise dry ground indicated where the water inside had drained away toward a wadi, a valley which becomes a river when the rain falls.

Israel has demolished 20 rainwater collection cisterns in the West Bank in the first half of this year, according to the U.N. Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), which monitors conditions in the Palestinian territories.

Read full article…

Phi Beta Iota: There are two crimes against humanity here, the first against the Palestinians, the second against the centuries old cisterns that collect winter water.

The Attack on the Liberty–The Untold Story of Israel’s Deadly 1967 Assault on a U.S. Spy Ship

2011/08/012011/08/01

Richard Wright: Jail Time for Over-Classification?

07 Other Atrocities, 09 Justice, 10 Security, 11 Society, Articles & Chapters, Corruption, Cultural Intelligence, Director of National Intelligence et al (IC), DoD, Government

Is it possible the good guys are going to win the issue of over-classifcation? Can a real Open Source Agency (OSA) become the new face of strateic intelligence?

Complaint Seeks Punishment for Classification of Documents

By SCOTT SHANE

New York Times, August 1, 2011

EXTRACT

Under the executive order governing classification, the punishment could include dismissal, suspension without pay, reprimand or loss of a security clearance.

. . . . . .

“I’ve never seen a more deliberate and willful example of government officials improperly classifying a document,” he said.

Phi Beta Iota: Since the early 1990's the general practice has been to classify everything, and agency heads and the limited number of classifying authorities have been severely derelict in their duty, allowing anyone down to the GS-1 night sweeper to classify documents “in their name.” In this specific instance, the Drake case, it would be quite nice to see someone go to jail. It won't happen, but both the Courts and the public are growing very intolerant of Executive malfeasance that would make Dick Cheney proud. In the purest sense of the world, the US Intelligence Community agency heads are corrupt. They lack integrity.

Reference: 1996 Hill Testimony on Secrecy

Reference: 1996 Testimony to Moynihan Commisson

1993 TESTIMONY on National Security Information

2011/07/312011/08/01

Chuck Spinney: Jeff Madrick on The Age of Greed and Failure of Government to Check Private Sector Greed

03 Economy, 07 Other Atrocities, 09 Justice, 10 Transnational Crime, 11 Society, Articles & Chapters, Commerce, Commercial Intelligence, Corruption, Cultural Intelligence, Government, IO Impotency, Money, Banks & Concentrated Wealth, Power Behind-the-Scenes/Special Interests

Here is a review of my friend Jeff Madrick's important new book, Age of Greed: The Triumph of Finance and the Decline of America, 1970 to the Present

Book review: ‘Age of Greed’ by Jeff Madrick

By David Greenberg, Washington Post Outlook, 29 July 2011

David Greenberg is a professor of history and of journalism and media studies at Rutgers University. He is a fellow at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars for the 2010-11 academic year.

EXTRACTS

“Age of Greed” chronicles how Americans ended up with the highly unregulated financial system that produced the meltdown of 2008 and the fallout that lingers three years later. What’s most novel about the book, which relies heavily on other secondary accounts, is that unlike other recent treatments of the financial crisis, it traces the origins of the problem not to the Bush or Clinton or even Reagan years, but all the way to the late 1960s.

. . . . . .

The real scandal revealed by Madrick’s important book is not the well-known tales of dastards such as telecom analyst Jack Grubman or Internet stock promoter Frank Quattrone, but the more elusive — and more consequential — story of how the government came to abdicate this supreme responsibility.

Read full review….

2011/07/312011/08/02

Reference: Open Source Agency (OSA) II

About the Idea, Articles & Chapters, Book Lists, Briefings (Core), Defense Science Board, DoD, Hill Letters & Testimony, Legislation, Memoranda, Monographs, Office of Management and Budget

This book remains the single definitive reference on the Smart Nation Act as developed by Robert Steele in support of Congressman Rob Simmons (R-CT-02). As pointed out in Hamilton Bean's recently published book, No More Secrets: Open Source Information and the Reshaping of US Intelligence the Open Source Agency (OSA) has become the subject of competing visions–on one side, those who favor accountability, effectiveness, transparency, and respect for the public…..on the other, those who favor corruption, profitable waste, secrecy, and the exclusion of the public.

The simplified public articles are three: 1995 GIQ 13/2 Creating a Smart Nation: Strategy, Policy, Intelligence, and Information; 2002 TIME Magazine The New Craft of Intelligence and 2006 Forbes Blank Slate On Intelligence.

The back-up book, the one intended to help the Department of Defense transform itself, INFORMATION OPERATIONS: All Information, All Languages, All the Time has since been supplemented by two briefings, 2009 DoD OSINT Leadership and Staff Briefings.

Most recently, INTELLIGENCE for EARTH: Clarity, Diversity, Integrity, & Sustainability provides the strategic, operational, tactical, and technical contexts for leveraging both Open Source Intelligence (OSINT) and Multinational, Multiagency, Multidisciplinary, Multidomain Information-Sharing and Sense-Making (M4IS2) in order to create a prosperous world at peace–and at one third the cost of what the USA spends on war today.

This book had two pre-cursors, 2002 THE NEW CRAFT OF INTELLIGENCE: Personal, Public, & Political and 2010 COLLECTIVE INTELLIGENCE: Creating a Prosperous World at Peace.

That book has since been supplemented by a chapter, 2010 The Ultimate Hack Re-Inventing Intelligence to Re-Engineer Earth, in the just-published book, Counterterrorism and Open Source Intelligence; and by two articles and a monograph from the U.S. Army Strategic Studies Institute, all three found at 2010: Human Intelligence (HUMINT) Trilogy Updated.

If an OSA is created–it can only be a success under diplomatic auspices as OMB has twice agreed (provided the Secretary of State asks for it as a sister agency to the Broadcasting Board of Governors (BBG), it could–it should–host the Multinational Decision Support Centre (MDSC) as proposed to DoD and implicitly called for in several Defense Science Board (DSB) reports. The MDSC could be located in Tampa, Florida, as the Coalition Coordination Centre has been, but staffed by intelligence professionals instead of logistics professionals.

Put most simply, an OSA restores intelligence and integrity to the entirety of the US Government, and changes everything about how we do policy, acquisitions, and operations. It restores the Republic.

2011/07/312011/07/31

Reference: Open Source Agency (OSA) I

About the Idea, Articles & Chapters, Briefings (Core), Director of National Intelligence et al (IC), DoD, Legislation, Memoranda

The Open Source Agency (OSA) was first proposed by Robert Steele to the Open Source Council in 1992, as an Open Source Center outside the wire. The rationale was that best in class sources would change constantly, and access was needed to all information in all languages all the time. CIA and MITRE conspired to substitute instead the Open Source Information System (OSIS), a still-anemic unproductive system with limited sources and no analytic tool-kit worthy of the name.

On this history, see:

Journal: LEXIS-NEXIS OSINT Kiss to CIA/OSC

History of Opposition (15)

Despite the history of opposition, and the fact that the CIA's Open Source Center (OSC) today only deals with eleven countries on a more or less regular basis, while going through the motions with others, a robust multinational network has been developed over time that includes at least 90 countries, some of which have made gains in harnessing the eight tribes of intelligence, some not. The Nordics, and especially Sweden, have been especially effective, at furthering the concept of M4IS2 (multinational, multiagency, multidisciplinary, multidomain information-sharing and sense-making).

On this progress, see:

Historic Contributions (246)

Search: The Future of OSINT [is M4IS2-Multinational]

There remains a need for an Open Source Agency (OSA) that is under diplomatic auspices as suggested by Dr. Joe Markowitz and endorsed by Congressman Rob Simmons (R-CT-02) and Robert Steele, both writing and speaking on this over the years. Below are some references that bear directly on the need for and the means by which an OSA might be created.

2010: Human Intelligence (HUMINT) Trilogy Updated

2010 INTELLIGENCE FOR EARTH: Clarity, Diversity, Integrity, & Sustainability

Legislation: Smart Nation-Safe Nation Act of 2009

Memoranda: OSS CEO to DNI One-Pager

Memorandum: $2 Billion Obligation Plan Centered on Defense, for a New Open Source Agency

Memoranda: Creating a New Agency with a New Mission, New Methods, and a New Mind Set

Memoranda: Policy-Budget Outreach Tool

2006 INFORMATION OPERATIONS: All Information, All Languages, All the Time

2006 THE SMART NATION ACT: Public Intelligence in the Public Interest

2006 Forbes Blank Slate On Intelligence

2002 THE NEW CRAFT OF INTELLIGENCE: Personal, Public, & Political

1995 GIQ 13/2 Creating a Smart Nation: Strategy, Policy, Intelligence, and Information

1995 National Information Strategy 101 Presentation to CENDI/COSPO*

2011/07/312011/07/31

Mario Profaca: FBI Idiot’s Guide to Islam

04 Education, 10 Security, 11 Society, Articles & Chapters, Corruption, Cultural Intelligence, IO Deeds of War, IO Impotency, Law Enforcement

What does this tell us about the intelligence and cultural literacy of the FBI training “leaders?”

The FBI was telling new bureau recruits as recently as Jan. 2009 that Islam “transforms [a] country's culture into 7th Century Arabian ways” and recommending a book written by one of Norwegian terrorism suspect Anders Behring Breivik's favorite authors as well as the Complete Idiot's Guide To Understanding Islam.

. . . . . . .

It's been well established that anti-Muslim self-proclaimed counterterrorism experts — often times funded by federal grants — have been giving advice to state and local law enforcement officers for years. But the fact that the nation's top law enforcement agency was pointing new federal agents to bigoted material as recently as 2009 came as a surprise to those who have seen this stuff before.

See full article and book covers….

2011/07/30

Marcus Aurelius: Joe Scarborough Tries to Scare on Debt

03 Economy, 07 Other Atrocities, 11 Society, Articles & Chapters, Budgets & Funding, Corruption, Cultural Intelligence, Government, IO Impotency

Marcus-Aurelius-150x150 — Marcus Aurelius

Below is an excellent example of scare-mongering and ideologically-rooted media froth.

The morning after

Joe Scarborough

WASHINGTON, D.C.— Aug. 3, 2011

It was a financial storm that even an economics professor could see coming. The debt crisis that had gripped Washington for a month came to a sudden, horrifying climax that left America’s economy looking like a nuclear wasteland. Credit markets suffered life-threatening seizures as the stock market dropped a staggering 25 percent. U.S. Treasuries plummeted as Moody’s and Standard & Poor’s downgraded the United States’ credit rating — instantly adding trillions of dollars in interest costs to the national debt. Only gold was on the rise, and its price exploded past $2,000 an ounce.

Read rest of article….

Phi Beta Iota: The only people who benefit from raising the debt ceiling are the banks that destroyed the economy in the first place, and the industrial complexes from medical to military that have grown the profligate entitlement and earmark society. Nationalizing the banks and closing down the Federal Reserve are both viable alternative strategies. The fact of the matter is that the truth is not on the table. To WHOM does the US Government owe money in violation of the Constitutional mandate that it be the steward of the full faith and credit of the Republic? Triage among sovereign powers, banks, and individual investors should reveal a wealth of alternatives. This is, as one TV commentator called it, a “food fight.” Intelligence and integrity are lacking within Washington–neither the Republicans nor the Democrats, the Congress nor the Executive, are demonstrating the needed character during this time of tribulation.