I will not replicate all that is at www.oss.net and to a much lesser extent, www.earth-intelligence.net, but do want to recognize a handful of extraordinary individuals by isolating their especially meritorious contributiions to the long-running debate about national intelligence reform and re-invention.
In the new year my focus is going to be on creating infinite wealth for all–on a moral rebirth of capitalism that harnesses the collective intelligence of all and creates infinite common wealth as a foundation for building a civilization that is conscious, deliberate, evolutionary, and ultimately good for all.
We start today–this week's focus–with a tour of the literature on Bio-Economics. The master list, Book Reviews on Bio-Economics, is in turn broken down into the six categories four of which I cover today–next week I will offer a guide to twelve books on water. Below I offer a short paragraph on the books selected, but for all books, a very long review with links can be accessed through the title link.
Empathy slaps me silly sometimes, and the “joy of Christmas” can be elusive when you see any fraction of the real pain and suffering in the world. In Buddhism, “suffering” is a technical term that has meanings so deep that words don’t suffice, but the fact is that many people are disrupted and disappointed in ways that scale from trivial to tragic. In this solstice celebration with its Christian religious and spiritual resonance, we try to be festive, to celebrate the life of someone who would have been bemused if not horrified by the material orgy produced in his name, now so vital a part of our economic life that we couldn’t lose it, even if we wanted to.
My paternal grandmother died on Christmas Eve when my father was ten years old. He revealed this to me when I was around the same age, and I realized from then on that Christmas had a far different sense for him than it had for me. Each year at Christmas he was reminded of death, loss, sadness.
I’m aware of many trails of sadness through this year’s holiday season, disconnections and deaths, as well as ordinary frailties and broken promises. In fact the whole world seems to be trembling at the moment, and our future is a blur. Celebration, like nirvana, seems almost selfish at the moment; the bodhisattva path makes more sense. I will celebrate this year as ever, and appreciate those close to me, but I will also find time to mourn the many losses and disappointments, and the divisions that have emerged in my life and others.
I do hope you have a Merry Christmas, forget for a moment the difficult realities that confront us and surround us, take the day to focus on love and fellowship. Subvert the darkness.
O you, happy roots,
with whom works of miracles
and not works of crime,
for burning predestined you were planted.
And to you, thoughtful fiery voice,
becoming the whetstone,
subverting the darkness.
Rejoice in that which is on top.
Rejoice in him,
who the many did not see on earth,
although they ardently cried for.
Rejoice in that which is on top.
~ Hildegarde von Bingen, translation by Rupert Chappelle
So this is Christmas
And what have you done
Another year over
And a new one just begun
And so this is Christmas
I hope you have fun
The near and the dear ones
The old and the young
ANSWER: Actually he did under “Challenge Seven” on inter-agency co-operation. In general his observations on inter-agency co-operation complement what you have often noted over the years. In this chapter he also has a scathing section called “The Impact of New Intelligence Hierarchy” in which he notes “serious limitations” of the DNI, but more interestingly argues that what really need to be reformed are intelligence processes and culture. He also dislikes the phrase ‘information sharing' because it implies that information is proprietary to specific agencies rather than belonging to the government as a whole. He also notes that the Intellgience Community “sometimes seem to have never learned that the Cold War is over.”
Finally he notes that what is really needed in the IC is “real time sharing and fusion of information of all kinds at all levels” rather than mindless protection of information that is of short term value.
It strikes me as very strange that someone like Cordesman who has been Mr. Inside for thirty years would come to roughly the same conclusions as Robert Steele, himself one of the most independent (and perceptive) thinkers on intellgience and information operations issues that I know.
I read Cordsman's treatment of Intellgience issues as evidence that the so-called IC is pretty close to becoming entirely irrelevant.
The author is a Lebanese journalist who is very well informed and knows many jihadists on a personal basis. He presents a view on AQ in the period just before 9/11 and its early aftermath.
EXTRACT: British novelist Aldous Huxley was a social critic and futurist, who is best known for penning Brave New World, which, aside from being a nearly 80-year-old science fiction masterpiece, is both an allegory and prophecy for 21st Century western society.
Huxley’s finger was on the pulse of human freedom, and he warned us over 50 years ago that it was fading fast. In 1958, he predicted that when concentrated in the hands of the “Power Elite,” rapidly evolving “mass communication” like television would be a critical tool of social and political conformity. Technology is only the medium, and it is “neither good nor bad,” Huxley wrote, but when in the wrong hands it can be “among the most powerful weapons in the dictator’s armory.” Propaganda, the suppression of the truth, particularly in democratic societies, Huxley argued, would bring upon an age of human enslavement, where instead of yokes and chains, people in celebrated “free” societies like America would be bound by the soft restraints of ignorance, incuriousness, distraction and irrationality.
. . . . . . .
EXTRACT: In his 1958 interview with Mike Wallace, Huxley explained his concept of velvet totalitarianism:
“’If you want to preserve your power indefinitely, you must get the consent of the ruled,’ he said. Those in power will do this primarily through ‘techniques of propaganda,’ by ‘bypassing the rational side of man and appealing to his subconscious and deeper emotions’ and ‘making him love his slavery.’”
I would submit that Mr. David Brooks loves his slavery, and furthermore, is the perfect “alpha caste” prototype from Brave New World – he uses the good brains God (Ford) gave him to reflexively sustain the status quo, barking and nipping like a loyal lapdog when something or someone threatens it. The same goes for the rest of the so-called journalistic elite who have taken to the Net and on the television to discredit Assange in recent days, either through bald ad hominem or discrediting his work as “not journalism,” or “criminal.” Proto-elite scrambling among the herd of pundits across the mediascape are the worst, feeling they have to be more red-faced and extravagant in their commentary in order to stand out.
. . . . . . .
EXTRACT: They aren’t even necessarily things we shouldn’t be reading or have some level of access to. Officials and journalists of every ilk spent the better part of this decade bemoaning the “over classification” of government information before, and especially after, 9/11. When pouring over the reams of information for the 9/11 Commission, former New Jersey Gov. Thomas Kean, who was chairing the commission said, “Three-quarters of what I read that was classified shouldn’t have been.”
Phi Beta Iota: Since starting this fight in 1988, the single most valuable body of knowledge we have acquired over those 22 years has been our little black book of great minds that speak the truth across all functional domains. Kelley Vlahos is married to Michael Vlahos, and they are two of the most nuanced thinkers we know. The era of secrecy and top-down micro-management for the benefit of the few is over. It will not be replaced by communism or anarchy, it will be replaced by moral communitarian capitalism and panarchy. It will focus–as we should have been focused since the end of World War II–on the needs and gifts of the five billion poor who can create infinite wealth, especially when we achieve infinite free energy by turning away from the corruption associated with the scarcity of fossil fuels, and instead tap into the free cosmic energy that Buckminster Fuller addressed so ably. INTEGRITY IS BACK IN VOGUE. That's a good thing.
The perennial issue regarding private military security contractors is the degree to which they are subject to effective oversight. In that regard there is only one item in today's news worth looking at. That is the report issued by the House Subcommittee on National Security and Foreign Affairs, chaired by John F. Tierney (D-MA). The Majority staff report is titled, Mystery at Manas: Strategic Blind Spots in the Department of Defense's Fuel Contracts in Kyrgyzstan. The report culminates an eight-month investigation into the Department of Defense's multi-billion dollar aviation fuel contracts at the Manas Transit Center in Kyrgyzstan.
Reminding one of the famous line by 1st Lieutenant Milo Minderbinder in Joseph Heller's famous Catch-22 novel, “We're gonna come out of this war rich!” the report found that to keep U.S. warplanes flying over Afghanistan, the Pentagon allowed a “secrecy obsessed” business group to supply jet fuel to a U.S. air base in Kyrgyzstan, turning a blind eye to an elaborate fraud involving fuel deliveries from Russia.
. . . . . . .
But the fuel was being bought by the Pentagon for shipment to the American airbase in Manas, Kyrgyzstan, and from there on to Afghanistan, the report said. Once Russian officials discovered the true identity of the recipient, they cut off supplies, creating a major logistical headache for United States military commanders.
That breakdown forced a major redrawing of supply routes into Afghanistan for jet fuel, which is in chronically short supply in landlocked Afghanistan. It also touched off a major behind-the-scenes diplomatic effort by the Obama administration to rebuild the fuel lines.
Phi Beta Iota: David Isenberg, author of Shadow Force: Private Security Contractors in Iraq, has become a valuable oversight contributor with respect to the out-of-control acquisition system on top of the out-of-control Private Military Contractor (PMC) system. When reliability and redundancy matter, any military force that does not understand its supply chain timelines, costs, and geospatial realities down to the RFID level, as well as the vulnerabilities to disruption, is begging for a major hit. The Information Operations (IO) domain appears poised for a major advance, integrating intelligence, logistics, operations, and civil affairs information in a manner never before attempted–with the supplemental value of placing Human Intelligence (HUMINT) in proper relationship to Cyber-Security, i.e. 70-30 or thereabouts (some would say 80-20). Make this multinational, and it will be a game changer. This is one reason the Office of the Inspector-General is one of the fifteen slices of HUMINT that must be managed by IO.
Poor No Labels. A million dollars wasted, all because the donors and the recipients are so out of touch with America they simply don't “get” the fact that the two-party tyranny is a “walking dead man,” and a diversity of voices & values has emerged across America and around the world.
With today's posting, I point to twelve of the lists of books reviews from Book Review Lists (Positive). For each list, I highlight two books from within that list. My intent is to demonstrate that America does not lack for authentic, coherent, integral voices & values — right now it lacks for honest leadership. Labels or No Labels, America has no leaders worth a warm bucket of spit. From wing-nuts to buffoons to frauds, we have no bench. The time has come, in my view, to retire an entire generation of local, state, and national “leaders,” and to make way for the younger generation, the digitally literate generation, for whom secrecy is a connectivity outage to be routed around.
David Isenberg
Robert David Steele
