Category: Topics (All Other)

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Journal: MILNET Selected Headlines

08 Wild Cards, Geospatial, Government, InfoOps (IO), Methods & Process, Military, Reform, Strategy, Technologies

Taliban Overhaul Their Image In Bid To Win Allies

Phi Beta Iota: We've known since 9/11 that the asymmetric war is also marked by an asymmetric excellence in public relations, propaganda and perception management–not only do our opponents spend $1 for every $500,000 to $5 million that we spend, but they are better at this than we are.  The USA is spending billions (low billions) on Information Operations (IO) and Strategic Communications, and still has no idea how to do it in languages we still do not speak, from a moral base we still do not have in the context of a Grand Strategy that does not exist because we have a secret intelligence world that is incapable of thinking broadly and deeply or giving the President and the Secretary of Defense what they NEED to know rather than what our expensive ignorant technical systems make possible to give.  We are SO reminded of Catholic Mandarin Ngo Dinh Diem in Viet-Nam with his murderous sister Madame Nhu (Karzai's Brother….), only this time you have drugs, religion, and no competent Afghan military we can pretend we are supporting.  A reprise of Dereliction of Duty: Johnson, McNamara, the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and the Lies That Led to Vietnam?

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Journal: What Voters Want

10 Transnational Crime, 11 Society, Civil Society, Reform
Webster Griffin Tarpley

In a depression, voters want populism.  If they can find potent New Deal economic populism, they will vote for it every time, as US elections between 1932 and 1944 show without a shadow of a doubt.  But if they do not find economic populism, they can easily fall prey to the cynical demagogy of cultural populism.  That is what has happened in Massachusetts.

The only way to be an economic populist is the shift the cost of the world economic depression and the tax burden generally onto Wall Street financial interests, that is to say onto the malefactors of great wealth who created this crisis in the first place.  That is the recipe for winning elections in a depression.

Most Democrats appear to be too far gone on the road to plutocracy to learn that lesson.  It therefore may well be time to create a new party to represent the one major political current in American life which is not represented by either of the two big parties of the day.  In other words, we desperately need, one way or another, a New Deal economic populist party to lead this country and much of the world out of the world economic depression.

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Journal: Focus on Amb David Johnson’s Crime Ideas

09 Terrorism, 10 Transnational Crime, Policy

The Escalating Ties between Middle Eastern Terrorist Groups and Criminal Activity

Original Online Source

Featuring David Johnson    January 19, 2010

Ambassador David Johnson is the assistant secretary of state for the Bureau of International Narcotics and Law Enforcement Affairs. In this position, Ambassador Johnson advises the president, secretary of state, related State Department bureaus, and other relevant government agencies on international narcotics and crime. In addition, he has served as deputy chief of mission for the U.S. embassy in London and as U.S. ambassador to the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe.

Download Ambassador Johnson's prepared remarks. (PDF)

Fighting Networks with Networks: Partnership and Shared Responsibility on Combating Transnational Crime

David T. Johnson  Honolulu, Hawaii   November 10, 2009

Keynote Address at the Trans-Pacific Symposium on Dismantling Transnational Illicit Networks

Phi Beta Iota: Tip of the Hat to Berto Jongman in Europe for isolating these as worthy of study.

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Journal: Intelligence Priority Theater, Weak Strategy

08 Wild Cards, Ethics, Government, Law Enforcement, Methods & Process, Military, Reform

China Removed As Top Priority For Spies

The decision downgrades China from “Priority 1” status, alongside Iran and North Korea, to “Priority 2,” which covers specific events such as the humanitarian crisis after the Haitian earthquake or tensions between India and Pakistan.

One new area that has been given a higher intelligence priority under the Obama administration is intelligence collection on climate change, a nontraditional mission marginally linked to national security. The CIA recently announced that it had set up a center to study the impact of climate change.

Phi Beta Iota: The priorities are primarily influential on collection by the National Security Agency (NSA), determining whether the “system” stays on Beijing or goes to Central Asia instead, and this is probably the heart of the matter.  HOWEVER, in combination with the DoD concerns that CIA is totally ineffective with respect to China, Afghanistan, or anything else of immediate concern (e.g. Somalia, Sudan, Yemen), and the idiocy of creating a Climate Change Center rather than restructuring to attack all ten high-level threats to humanity, this latest “theater” must be labeled for what it is–naked Emperors parading their very expensive rags.  CIA is an utter travesty in all respects.  The DNI is treading water for lack of vision, understanding, authority, and the will to confront “the system.”  DoD is not much better–paper-pushing stuffed shirts and politically-correct uniforms disconnected from ground truth and the real needs of policy directors, acquisition managers, and operational commanders down to the company level.  Not pretty at all.

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Journal: InfoTech Gap Between Private & Public

InfoOps (IO), Technologies

Full Story Online

White House meets corporate CEOs for ideas on modernizing government

Because too many government information technology systems are rooted in the 1960s and ’70s, the White House is convening a conference today of 50 corporate chief executives with the hope of generating fresh ideas to help modernize government and improve efficiency.

Chief Performance Officer Jeffrey Zients, who has spent 20 years in the private sector, said that “in my seven months as CPO it has become clear to me that one of the biggest challenges we face is the technology gap that exists between the public and private sectors.”

Phi Beta Iota: Despite the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) effort to find “common solutions,” the reality is that stove-pipe budgets and stove-pipe promotion systems produce stove-pipe minds.  What OMB should be doing is creating a global skunk works to establish the open source trinity: free/open source software, open source intelligence, and open spectrum, amidst deep Multinational Engagement.  Of course, DoD could do this on its own, if it really wanted to, through the Defesne Open Source Center and embedded Multinational Decision Support Center.

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Journal: Guantanamo “Suicides”–Shamed Again

08 Wild Cards, 09 Justice, 09 Terrorism, 10 Security, Collective Intelligence, Cultural Intelligence, Ethics, Government, Methods & Process, Military, Peace Intelligence

Marcus Aurelius

Murder and Cover-Up

The Guantánamo Suicides

By STEPHEN SOLDZ

My friends who served in the military speak of the pride with they performed what  they viewed as their duty. This duty included the obligation to act with honor, including, above all, following the Geneva Conventions when handling detainees and prisoners of war. My friends tell sadly of the despair they felt in seeing this obligation shredded during the Bush administration as word came down that they should do “whatever it takes.”  Some of them resigned in disgust. Others resisted what they viewed as moral decay from within.

A new story by attorney Scott Horton at Harpers reveals yet another very disturbing episode of dishonor. Horton reveals strong credible evidence that three alleged “suicides” at Guantanamo in June 2006 were really homicides. The official story is that during the night of  June 9, 2006, three prisoners were found hanging in their cells in Alpha Block of Guantanamo's Camp 1.

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Stephen Soldz is a psychoanalyst, psychologist, public health researcher, and faculty member at the Boston Graduate School of Psychoanalysis. He edits the Psyche, Science, and Society blog. He is a founder of the Coalition for an Ethical Psychology, one of the organizations working to change American Psychological Association policy on participation in abusive interrogations. He is President-Elect of Psychologists for Social Responsibility [PsySR].

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