The truth at any cost lowers all other costs — curated by former US spy Robert David Steele.
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.
Can Thematic Content Analysis Separate the Pyramid of Ideas from the Pyramid of Action? A Comparison Among Different Degrees of Commitment to Violence
Peter Suedfeld, Ryan W. Cross, and Carson Logan
The University of British Columbia
psuedfeld@psych.ubc.ca
Abstract
Thematic Content Analysis in an Early Warning System for Deterrence
Peter Suedfeld and Ryan W. Cross
The University of British Columbia
Thematic Content Analysis (TCA) is a method for converting qualitative material, such as verbal text, to quantitative data through replicable, reliable, and rigorous procedures. A variety of coding manuals are available to score for different psychological variables in areas including cognition, affect, motivation, aspirations, values, and personality.
Continue reading “Thematic Content Analysis in an Early Warning System for Deterrence”
China's Currency Policy: An Analysis of the Economic Issues, July 22, 2013
International Illegal Trade in Wildlife: Threats and U.S. Policy, July 23, 2013
The 2010 Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill: Natural Resource Damage Assessment Under the Oil Pollution Act, July 24, 2013
Analysis of Renewable Identification Numbers (RINs) in the Renewable Fuel Standard (RFS), July 22, 2013
Proposed Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP): In Brief, July 23, 2013
Hague Convention Treaty on Recovery of International Child Support and H.R. 1896, July 15, 2013
Kazakhstan: Recent Developments and U.S. Interests, July 22, 2013
“If Congress goes along [by approving President Obama's 2014 DOD budget request], Pentagon spending levels will exceed any previous high by any other president in any year in peace or in war since the death of President Roosevelt in 1945, except for President George W. Bush from 2006 to 2008.”
“…current military spending is lapping at historic highs, not lows.”
How can that be? The explanation follows; it is also at Time's Battleland blog.
Correcting the Pentagon's Distorted Budget History
The Defense Budget Is Even Larger Than You Think: part two of two
Given the warped measures that high-spending advocates and the Defense Department use to calibrate past, present and future defense spending (described here Monday), it is important to find an independent, objective yardstick to measure Pentagon spending trends accurately.
Unfortunately, there isn't one.
If there were, this debate would be over, and I could retire.
The Bureau of Economic Analysis in the Commerce Department might be tasked with the job of finding one, but it actually plays a major role in devising the Pentagon's self-serving measures of inflation. The Office of Management and Budget has its own deflators that are only slightly different.
Both embrace the proposition that a large portion of cost growth in Pentagon spending should be counted as inflation: the Pentagon experiences more inflation than other agencies and should get more money-the argument goes.
In the 1980s, the Congressional Military Reform Caucus argued that the Pentagon should be held to an independent but analogous measure of inflation, and identified the Producer Price Index as most appropriate. Others, especially the Defense Department, disagreed.
The differences will not be resolved here, but the question remains: what would the Pentagon's budget history look like if it lived by the rules followed by most everyone else – especially the rest of the federal government, and the American economy?
The Costs And Benefits Of The NSA
The data-collection debate we need to have is not about civil liberties.
By Reuel Marc Gerecht
Weekly Standard, June 24, 2013
Should Americans fear the possible abuse of the intercept power of the National Security Agency at Fort Meade, Maryland? Absolutely. In the midst of the unfolding scandal at the IRS, we understand that bureaucracies are callous creatures, capable of manipulation. In addition to deliberate misuse, closed intelligence agencies can make mistakes in surveilling legitimate targets, causing mountains of trouble. Consider Muslim names. Because of their commonness and the lack of standardized transliteration, they can befuddle scholars, let alone intelligence analysts, who seldom have fluency in Islamic languages. Although one is hard pressed to think of a case since 9/11 in which mistaken identity, or a willful or unintentional leak of intercept intelligence, immiserated an American citizen, these things can happen. NSA civilian employees, soldiers, FBI agents, CIA case officers, prosecutors, and our elected officials are not always angels. Even though encryption is mathematically easier to accomplish than decryption, the potential for abuse of digital communication is always there—all the more since few Americans resort to encryption of their everyday emails.
But fearing the NSA, which has been a staple of Hollywood for decades, requires you to believe that hundreds, if not thousands, of American employees in the organization are in on a conspiracy. In the Edward Snowden-is-a-legitimate-NSA-
