Public Intelligence Blog – Page 2088 – The truth at any cost lowers all other costs — curated by former US spy Robert David Steele.

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IC INSPECTOR GENERAL REPORTS ON ACTIVITIES

The latest report from the Inspector General of the Intelligence Community provides an updated (and largely redacted) snapshot of the IG's investigative agenda.

During the nine-month period from July 2012 to March 2013, the IC IG internal hotline received 70 contacts or complaints from intelligence agency personnel, as well as 77 contacts from the general public.

Investigators conducted 75 investigations revealing some occasionally creative forms of misconduct. In one case, an ODNI employee “was operating a personal website on Government time using Government systems through which he solicited and received donations.” Another ODNI employee “attempted to improperly obtain a security clearance for a private citizen through the use of a no-cost contract.”

Three cases of suspected unauthorized disclosures were closed when they were found to be unsubstantiated. Two investigations of unauthorized disclosures remained open as of March 31.

Last month, IC Inspector General I. Charles McCullough III told Congress that his office could not perform an investigation of NSA surveillance programs because it lacked the resources to do so.

“While my office has the jurisdiction to conduct an IC-wide review of all IC elements using these authorities,” Mr. McCullough wrote in a November 5 letter to Senator Leahy and others, “such a review will implicate ongoing oversight efforts. Therefore, I have been conferring with several IC Inspectors General Forum members in order to consider how such a review might be accomplished given the potential impact to IG resources and ongoing projects.”

2013/12/022013/12/02

Anthony Judge: Imagining Attractive Global Governance

Cultural Intelligence

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Imagining Attractive Global Governance

Questioning possibilities and constraints of well-boundedness

Introduction
Pattern of governance-related questions
Representing boundaries to governance (constrained by other boundaries)
Refinement through disciplinary perspectives and cognitive preferences
Reframing sets of injunctions through questions
Dynamic representation of proposals for principled global governance
References

See Also:

Anthony Judge at Phi Beta Iota

2013/12/02

Mini-Me: $7.25 an Hour? That’s $15,000 a Year – NOT a Living Wage!

01 Poverty, 03 Economy, 07 Other Atrocities, 09 Justice, 10 Transnational Crime, 11 Society, Commerce, Corruption, Government

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Huh?

$7.25 an hour is not a living wage

By Richard Trumka and Christine Owens

CNN, December 2, 2013

Editor's note: Richard Trumka is president of the AFL-CIO. Christine Owens is executive director of the National Employment Law Project, an advocacy group for lower-wage workers.

(CNN) — For the first time since the Great Depression, the U.S. Census Bureau tells us, middle-class family incomes have lost ground for more than a decade.

The sad truth is that the rewards for productivity and hard work such as health care coverage, retirement security, opportunity — rewards that used to make America's workers “middle class” — are on the rocks.

All the wage increases over the past 15 years have gone to the wealthiest 10%, according to the Economic Policy Institute. All of them. And almost all, 95%, of the income gains from 2009 to 2012, the first three years of recovery from the Great Recession, went to the very richest 1%.

Something else has happened, too. The bottom has fallen out of America's wage floor. And the erosion of the minimum wage has lowered pay and working standards for all of us.

Read rest of article.

2013/12/022013/12/02

4th Media: We Don’t Make This Stuff Up! — Occupy as a Form of Rising Anarchism

Cultural Intelligence

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The New Politics of the 21st Century: Global Resistance and Rising Anarchism

A number of occurrences have taken place of the past 13 years since the rise of the new millennium; we have seen and are seeing the rise of popular movements all over the world and a resistance to the forces of imperialism, capitalism, and subjugation, from the most recent Arab Spring to the world’s largest coordinated anti-war protest in history with the global protests against the Iraq War[1], to the rise of the Occupy Movement and the rise of indigenous resistance as can be seen in the Idle No More campaign of Canada’s First Nations population. What we seeing around the world is a global resistance that, in some cases, has anarchist undercurrents. We are witnessing the new politics of the 21st century.

While many movements such as the Occupy Movement and the Arab Spring had anarchists and anarchist influences within them, anarchism as a political philosophy is quite misunderstood and some time should be taken to understand it.

Continue reading “4th Media: We Don't Make This Stuff Up! — Occupy as a Form of Rising Anarchism”

2013/12/022013/12/02

Review: Intelligence Collection – How to Plan and Execute Intelligence Collection in Complex Environments

4 Star, Intelligence (Commercial), Intelligence (Government/Secret)

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Wayne Michael Hall, Gary Citrenbaum

4.0 out of 5 stars Utterly Brilliant, Eye-Glazing, 505 Pages of Straight Text, 10 Micro-Slides, December 2, 2013

You could read this book a hundred times and learn something new every time. I have taken off one star because the book is too dense by far, with a tiny handful of graphics (no more than 10) all eye glazers that should have been simplified and printed to a full page — 550 pages, pure text. What needs to happen, plain and simple, is a complete do-over — this book needs to go to 620 pages at least, with 60 added graphics, tables, or lists.

What I love most about this book, and its companion, Intelligence Analysis: How to Think in Complex Environments (Praeger Security International) are the following two attributes:

01: Among all the books I have read on intelligence, these two books are among the most detailed, structured, critical, and relevant I have read. Both books share the same flaws, flaws that superior editing and a graphics team could easily fix for a second edition, which I would strongly recommend. BEFORE the books go to paperback, they need to be redone. As they are now, the books are too overwhelming for 98% of those who might otherwise benefit.

02 Buried within each chapter are absolute gems of blood-letting romping stomping criticism of the US Intelligence Community at every level (tactical to strategic) across every mission area. This book is startling in its depth and breadth of understanding. The authors are articulate but dense, and I dearly hope they will redo both books to make them more accessible to the vastly larger audience that needs this level of detail, but served up as a quiver of “open” chapters instead of one really dense baseball bat that clubs you to death with compounded words.

Although I am troubled by the book's emphasis on unilateral and largely military-oriented collection (as opposed to making full use of full-spectrum human and open source intelligence (fifteen slices) across the eight tribes and mulitnationally, I whole-heartedly recommend this book for every library on intelligence (decision-support), and I sincerely hope the authors will re-do both books to open them up — more graphics, more white space.

Below, for this particular book, I list the collection contradictions from chapter 4:

Continue reading “Review: Intelligence Collection – How to Plan and Execute Intelligence Collection in Complex Environments”

2013/12/022013/12/02

Review: Intelligence Analysis – How to Think in Complex Environments

4 Star, Intelligence (Commercial), Intelligence (Government/Secret)

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Wayne Michael Hall and Gary Citrenbaum

4.0 out of 5 stars Utterly Brilliant, Mind-Glazing, 440 Pages of Straight Text, December 2, 2013

You could read this book a hundred times and learn something new every time. I have taken off one star because the book is too dense by far, with not a single graphic, table, or highlighted anything. 441 pages, pure text. What needs to happen, plain and simple, is a complete do-over — this book needs to go to 500 pages at least, with 60 added graphics, tables, or lists.

What I love most about this book, and its companion, Intelligence Collection: How to Plan and Execute Intelligence Collection in Complex Environments (Praeger Security International) are the following two attributes:

Although I am troubled by the book's lack of a holistic analytic model, its lack of any reference to true cost economics, and its general avoidance of any discussion of the complexity of the customers for intelligence in the aggregate (the focuses on individual commanders and their needs, not on Whole of Government or Multinational or Eight Tribe collection and analytics), I whole-heartedly recommend this book for every library on intelligence (decision-support), and I sincerely hope the authors will re-do both books to open them up — more graphics, more white space.

Below, for this particular book, I list the chapter headings that are a Master's course in advanced analytics:

Continue reading “Review: Intelligence Analysis – How to Think in Complex Environments”

2013/12/022013/12/02