The truth at any cost lowers all other costs — curated by former US spy Robert David Steele.
Future-Proofing Cities: Strategies to Help Cities Develop Capacities to Absorb Future Shocks and Stresses (PDF, 20 Pages, 2012)
See Also:
Graphic: Food Production (Future-Proofing Cities)
Graphic: Metabolism of Food-Energy-Water (Future-Proofing Cities)
Graphic: Distributed Integrated Production Food-Energy-Water (Future-Proofing Cities)
Graphic: Integrated Durability of Key Components (Future-Proofing Cities)
As Wyoming plans for federal collapse (where, exactly, they will put the aircraft carrier remains unresolved), it behooves all of us to spend a little time thinking about “what if” the national supply chains for food and fuel implode.
I am not that enthused about the terms “smart city” or even “intelligent city,” but recognize both among the links below. Neither smart nor intelligent equates to agile, adaptive, resilient, or sustainable.
In the course of my cursory evening of exploration, the coolest term I found was “future-proofing,” and here is the title and link to the online lecture, “Future Proofing Cities: Planning and Designing for Future Resilience” (Craig Applegath).
Runner-up terms included the “self-sufficient city,” “off-the-grid city,” and “living architecture.”
Tyler Durden
ZeroHedge, 1 March 2012
We were speechless when we read this from Bloomberg.
The Bank of Israel will begin today a pilot program to invest a portion of its foreign currency reserves in U.S. equities.
The investment, which in the initial phase will amount to 2 percent of the $77 billion reserves, or about $1.5 billion, will be made through UBS AG and BlackRock Inc. (BLK), Bank of Israel spokesman Yossi Saadon said in a telephone interview today. At a later stage, the investment is expected to increase to 10 percent of the reserves.
A small number of central banks have started investing part of their reserves in equities. About 9 percent of the foreign- exchange reserves of Switzerland’s central bank were invested in shares at the end of the third quarter, the Swiss bank said on its website.
The investment will be made in equity index trackers and will include between 1,500 to 2,000 shares, among them stocks like Apple Inc. (AAPL), Saadon said.
More from Globes:
Sad as the comment might be, this makes sense. Every state should do doing similar planning. The next major collapse is scheduled for 2013-2014. The next step up would be regional (nine nations) planning boards for agriculture, energy, food, and water. This summer may be the last calm period for some time.
Wyoming House advances doomsday bill
Jeremy Pelzer
Star-Tribune, 24 February 2012
CHEYENNE — State representatives on Friday advanced legislation to launch a study into what Wyoming should do in the event of a complete economic or political collapse in the United States.
House Bill 85 passed on first reading by a voice vote. It would create a state-run government continuity task force, which would study and prepare Wyoming for potential catastrophes, from disruptions in food and energy supplies to a complete meltdown of the federal government.
The task force would look at the feasibility of
Wyoming issuing its own alternative currency, if needed. And House members approved an amendment Friday by state Rep. Kermit Brown, R-Laramie, to have the task force also examine conditions under which Wyoming would need to implement its own military draft, raise a standing army, and acquire strike aircraft and an aircraft carrier.
The bill’s sponsor, state Rep. David Miller, R-Riverton, has said he doesn’t anticipate any major crises hitting America anytime soon. But with the national debt exceeding $15 trillion and protest movements growing around the country, Miller said Wyoming — which has a comparatively good economy and sound state finances — needs to make sure it’s protected should any unexpected emergency hit the U.S.
Several House members spoke in favor of the legislation, saying there was no harm in preparing for the worst.
“I don’t think there’s anyone in this room today what would come up here and say that this country is in good shape, that the world is stable and in good shape — because that is clearly not the case,” state Rep. Lorraine Quarberg, R-Thermopolis, said. “To put your head in the sand and think that nothing bad’s going to happen, and that we have no obligation to the citizens of the state of Wyoming to at least have the discussion, is not healthy.”
Wyoming’s Department of Homeland Security already has a statewide crisis management plan, but it doesn’t cover what the state should do in the event of an extreme nationwide political or economic collapse. In recent years, lawmakers in at least six states have introduced legislation to create a state currency, all unsuccessfully.
The task force would include state lawmakers, the director of the Wyoming Department of Homeland Security, the Wyoming attorney general and the Wyoming National Guard’s adjutant general, among others.
The bill must pass two more House votes before it would head to the Senate for consideration. The original bill appropriated $32,000 for the task force, though the Joint Appropriations Committee slashed that number in half earlier this week.
University of Wyoming political science professor Jim King said the potential for a complete unraveling of the U.S. government and economy is “astronomically remote” in the foreseeable future.
But King noted that the federal government set up a Continuity of Government Commission in 2002, of which former U.S. Sen. Al Simpson, R-Wyo., was co-chairman. However, King said he didn’t know of any states that had established a similar board.
Recently, the New York Times (4 February 2012) published a story, “U.S. Plans Shift to Elite Units as It Winds Down in Afghanistan”, and the Washington Post (5 February 2012) followed with “U.S. to elevate Special Operations forces’ role in Afghanistan.”
From the Washington Post version, I noted the following salient points.
“The U.S. military is planning to elevate the role of Special Operations forces in Afghanistan as it shifts away from a combat focus to a mission that places greater emphasis on advising Afghan forces and raids to kill top insurgent leaders, senior U.S. officials said.”
“As American troop levels drop, U.S. commanders will by necessity have to rely more heavily on Afghan units to operate with minimal support from big, conventional Army and Marine units.”
“The new focus could rely on American Special Forces soldiers to fill out some of the advisory teams in the most violent areas of Afghanistan. The Special Forces troops would continue to advise and mentor elite Afghan units and the Afghan local police, a program in which villages form units to defend themselves. The primary mission of the Army’s Special Forces, also known as the Green Berets, is to mentor, train and fight alongside indigenous forces. The Special Forces teams also have the ability to marshal firepower from American warplanes for Afghan forces.”
Meanwhile, in an Op-Ed piece in the Washington Post on 9 February 2012, George F. Will wrote “the drone war is being waged more vigorously than ever….”.
The evolutionary development that is most impressive is evolving from using the firepower of American piloted warplanes to the use of unmanned drones mentioned by George Will.
In my book, “Cash on Delivery: CIA Special Operations During the Secret War in Laos” (www.rosebankpress.com), I wrote, “At the beginning of the “Global War on Terrorism”, which began in September 2001, the American military’s subsequent actions in Afghanistan brought new publicity to the use of special operations in denied areas. The use of small teams consisting of Rangers, Seals, Delta Force or others of this type of specially trained soldier in conjunction with the U.S. Air Force and U.S. Navy’s advanced smart bomb technology may turn out to be an advancement in warfare equivalent to the long bow, gunpowder, the machine gun, the tank or the airplane. The combination of global positioning systems, laser guidance, detailed maps, radar, J-Stars, and moving target indicators make the delivery of bombs by the United States Air Force and the United States Navy the most deadly and accurate ever.”
This early 2000s use of special operations forces and advanced technology for bomb delivery were precursors to the “drone war” we see today. The earlier advanced technology, mentioned above, was improved and eventually augmented by the drone for the delivery of missiles and even the missiles have evolved into more accurate and deadly munitions.
It is a simple calculus on the surface. Intelligence is collected by using technology, i.e., aerial surveillance, intercepts, etc, or by using human sources, i.e., informants, prisoners, and/or captured documents and equipment. The intelligence is analyzed and targets are developed. Action is taken in the form of drone attack or perhaps ground attack. If ground attacks are made, more intelligence may be gained from prisoners, captured documents or captured equipment, such as computers or cell phones.
Ground attacks might be made by all-American units, hybrid American-Afghan units or by all-Afghan units. In special operations in other countries, merely substitute the local participant from the country in which the special operations are taking place.
The special operations formula might be expressed this way, intelligence (technical and/or humint) + action (technical and/or human) = terrorist elimination. There is nothing new in this formula. What is new is the technology that can be used for intelligence collection or for action, i.e., drones.
Stephen Aftergood wrote in “Secrecy News”, 21 February 2012, “USSOCOM [U.S. Special Operations Command] and the CIA currently coordinate, share, exchange liaison officers and operate side by side in the conduct of DOD overt and clandestine operations and CIA’s covert operations, said Michael D. Lumpkin, acting assistant secretary of defense.”
“Our activities are mutually supportive based on each organization’s strengths and weaknesses and overall capabilities. Whichever organization has primary authority to conduct the operation leads; whichever organization has the superior planning and expertise plans it; both organizations share information about intelligence, plans, and ongoing operations fully and completely. Whether one or both organizations participate in the execution depends on the scope of the plan and the effect that needs to be achieved. Currently all USSOCOM and CIA operations are coordinated and deconflicted at all levels.”
http://www.fas.org/blog/secrecy/2012/02/deconflicted.html
The Osama bin Laden raid is a successful application of the special operations formula, with emphasis on all-American air and ground units.
The technical intelligence collection part of the formula can continue to be all-American for quite a while, but what we need to see, as soon as possible, is all-Afghan human intelligence collection and all-Afghan ground action units. Actually, I hope we never hear the details. Call me old school, but I prefer that the details remain secret. However, I would really love to believe that one day the special operations formula will be Afghan intelligence collection + Afghan action = terrorist elimination. We should all hope that all-Afghan special operations will result in the capture of terrorists and the seizure of equipment leading to significant new intelligence, thus contributing to a continuing cycle of intelligence + action = terrorist elimination.
Since evocations of the Vietnam War seem to rile so many, one hopes there is never an inclination to call it “Afghanization”.
The goal of worldwide special operations must be evolution from al-American to hybrid indigenous-American to (finally) all-indigenous action units with, at most, American participation as program managers who never participate “on the ground” but only in advising and providing support.
What Would a “Good” Banking System Look Like? Banks Weren’t Meant to Be Like This
MICHAEL HUDSON
CounterPunch, Weekend Edition January 27-29, 2012
In medieval times, wealthy bankers lent to kings and princes as their major customers. But now it is the banks that are needy, relying on governments for funding – capped by the post-2008 bailouts to save them from going bankrupt from their bad private-sector loans and gambles.
Yet the banks now browbeat governments – not by having ready cash but by threatening to go bust and drag the economy down with them if they are not given control of public tax policy, spending and planning. The process has gone furthest in the United States. Joseph Stiglitz characterizes the Obama administration’s vast transfer of money and pubic debt to the banks as a “privatizing of gains and the socializing of losses. It is a ‘partnership’ in which one partner robs the other.” Prof. Bill Black describes banks as becoming criminogenic and innovating “control fraud.” High finance has corrupted regulatory agencies, falsified account-keeping by “mark to model” trickery, and financed the campaigns of its supporters to disable public oversight. The effect is to leave banks in control of how the economy’s allocates its credit and resources.
If there is any silver lining to today’s debt crisis, it is that the present situation and trends cannot continue. So this is not only an opportunity to restructure banking; we have little choice. The urgent issue is who will control the economy: governments, or the financial sector and monopolies with which it has made an alliance.
Fortunately, it is not necessary to re-invent the wheel. Already a century ago the outlines of a productive industrial banking system were well understood. But recent bank lobbying has been remarkably successful in distracting attention away from classical analyses of how to shape the financial and tax system to best promote economic growth – by public checks on bank privileges.
How banks broke the social compact, promoting their own special interests
People used to know what banks did. Bankers took deposits and lent them out, paying short-term depositors less than they charged for risky or less liquid loans. The risk was borne by bankers, not depositors or the government. But today, bank loans are made increasingly to speculators in recklessly large amounts for quick in-and-out trading. Financial crashes have become deeper and affect a wider swath of the population as debt pyramiding has soared and credit quality plunged into the toxic category of “liars’ loans.”
The first step toward today’s mutual interdependence between high finance and government was for central banks to act as lenders of last resort to mitigate the liquidity crises that periodically resulted from the banks’ privilege of credit creation. In due course governments also provided public deposit insurance, recognizing the need to mobilize and recycle savings into capital investment as the industrial revolution gained momentum. In exchange for this support, they regulated banks as public utilities.
Over time, banks have sought to disable this regulatory oversight, even to the point of decriminalizing fraud.
Bound for Failure
In the brief introduction to a review of the book, Very Special Intelligence, Dolphin noted that the successful tactical doctrine of using combined intelligence and combat troops in tightly organized teams was being seriously diluted by the U.S. IC (read CIA, DIA, NGA and NSA) who were moving to fold the intelligence elements involved into the bureaucratic mainstream and to automate the intelligence processes involved.
As I noted in an earlier article (The Triumph of Tactical Intelligence) U.S. Forces engaged in counter-insurgency operations (COIN) in both Iraq and Afghanistan have developed an innovative tactical concept, which Dolphin noted was based on research and development work done at the U. S. Naval Post Graduate School by a team under General Dell Daily. The essence of this concept is the High-value Target Teams (HTT) which integrates special operations forces fighters with military and civilian intelligence analysts into tightly organized teams in which immediate tactical intelligence is essential to identifying so called high value targets (usually individuals) and guiding war-fighters to their locations. This apparently was not a case of intelligence support being provided by folks sitting far from the action phoning in information, but of intelligence support being very much part of the operation itself with the war fighters. At a recent hearing of the House Armed Services Committee on Special Operations Forces, Michael D. Lumpkin, Acting Assistant Secretary of Defense said, “USSOCOM [U.S. Special Operations Command] and the CIA currently coordinate, share, exchange liaison officers and operate side by side in the conduct of DOD overt and clandestine operations and CIA’s covert operations.”
