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Marcus Aurelius: General Failure — Neil Sheehan Reviews Thomas Rick’s New Book Plus Chapter Extract

Corruption, Idiocy, Ineptitude, Military
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Marcus Aurelius

An adapted excerpt from this book, cued to me by a friend, can be found as indicated below, followed by Neil Sheehan's review of the book.

General Failure

Looking back on the troubled wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, many observers are content to lay blame on the Bush administration. But inept leadership by American generals was also responsible for the failure of those wars. A culture of mediocrity has taken hold within the Army’s leadership rank—if it is not uprooted, the country’s next war is unlikely to unfold any better than the last two.

EXTRACT:

Relief of generals has become so rare that a private who loses his rifle is now punished more than a general who loses his part of the war.

. . . . . . .

To a shocking degree, the Army’s leadership ranks have become populated by mediocre officers, placed in positions where they are likely to fail. Success goes unrewarded, and everything but the most extreme failure goes unpunished, creating a perverse incentive system that drives leaders toward a risk-averse middle where they are more likely to find stalemate than victory.

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DefDog: Benghazi: No Intelligence, No Integrity, No Answers PLUS Planted Story in Washington Times?

04 Inter-State Conflict, 05 Civil War, 07 Other Atrocities, Corruption, Government, Ineptitude, IO Deeds of War, Military
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DefDog

Integrity lost….again.

TRR: Is a General losing his job over Benghazi?

Washington Times, 28 October 2012

Is an American General losing his job for trying to save the Americans besieged in Benghazi? This is the latest potential wrinkle in the growing scandal surrounding the September 11, 2012 terrorist attack that left four men dead and President Obama scrambling for a coherent explanation.

On October 18, Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta appeared unexpectedly at an otherwise unrelated briefing on “Efforts to Enhance the Financial Health of the Force.” News organizations and CSPAN were told beforehand there was no news value to the event and gave it scant coverage. In his brief remarks Mr. Panetta said, “Today I am very pleased to announce that President Obama will nominate General David Rodriguez to succeed General Carter Ham as commander of U.S. Africa Command.” This came as a surprise to many, since General Ham had only been in the position for a year and a half. The General is a very well regarded officer who made AFRICOM into a true Combatant Command after the ineffective leadership of his predecessor, General William E. “Kip” Ward. Later, word circulated informally that General Ham was scheduled to rotate out in March 2013 anyway, but according to Joint doctrine, “the tour length for combatant commanders and Defense agency directors is three years.” Some assumed that he was leaving for unspecified personal reasons.

Read full article.

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SmartPlanet: Gap in Weather Satellites [While Secret World Spends Madly]

Advanced Cyber/IO, Commerce, Government, Ineptitude, Military
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In the future, Hurricane Sandy is invisible

By | October 28, 2012, 7:28 AM PDT

With 60 million people expected to be impacted by Hurricane Sandy, days of advanced notice have allowed the New York governor to issue a state of emergency, evacuations to take place along the Atlantic coast, and (at least in my Washington, D.C. neighborhood) residents to clear the grocery store shelves ahead of the storm’s dangerous surge. But soon weather forecasters might not be able to provide us with details and predictions of dangerous storms.That’s because there’s another looming problem in the United States that could be even bigger than Hurricane Sandy: dying satellites. The New York Times reports:

The United States is facing a year or more without crucial satellites that provide invaluable data for predicting storm tracks, a result of years of mismanagement, lack of financing and delays in launching replacements, according to several recent official reviews.

The looming gap in satellite coverage, which some experts view as almost certain within the next few years, could result in shaky forecasts about storms like Hurricane Sandy, which is expected to hit the East Coast early next week.

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Michel Bauwens: Nondominium and the Commons

Cultural Intelligence, Earth Intelligence, Gift Intelligence, Hacking
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Michel Bauwens

Using Nondominion to Evolve from Local to Global Commons

* Paper: From Local to Global Commons. Applying Ostrom’s Key Principles for Sustainable Governance. By Valnora Leister and Mark Frazier.

Abstract

“This paper explores a possible new local-to-global system for the equitable governance of the “common pool resources.” As normally understood, the “Commons” refers to resources that are owned or shared among communities. Such resources (forests, fisheries, etc.) when located within national boundaries are subject to that country’s laws. Areas beyond national jurisdiction, including the high-seas, Antarctica, the ocean sea-bed, outer space and the Earth’s environment, are known as “Common Heritage of Mankind” (CHM) and subject to Public International Law (PIL). The object and subject of traditional PIL is the nation-state. However, since the 1972 Conference for the Human Environment, individuals and Non-Governmental Organizations (NGO’s) have been legally recognized under PIL as having direct responsibility for protection of the global environment, by working for transparency and accountability in its management. With this opening for direct participation by individuals and NGOs in working for sustainable management of the global Commons, it may be now feasible to extend the precedents identified by Nobel Laureate Elinor Ostrom for successful economic governance of local common pool resources to wider CHM areas.

A recently developed legal concept – nondominium – offers a framework for recognizing user rights toward this end. Combining Ostrom’s principles with this new approach for shared use of the Commons promises to give a more solid legal grounding for the 5 “As” (Architecture, Adaptiveness, Accountability, Allocation and Access) in the governance of the global commons for the benefit of humanity.”

Read Extracts.

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Michel Bauwens: Alan Moore on Hacking the Future

Hacking
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Michel Bauwens

To be Part of the Future You Have to Hack It

Alan Moore

Huffington Post, 6 August 2012

Embracing an ambiguous world

In 2006 IBM produced a report called ‘The enterprise of the future'. The survey of CEOs revealed that 8 out of 10 CEOs saw significant change ahead and yet the gap between expected levels of change plus the ability to manage it had tripled. Why? I would argue these leaders did not have the means to see an unfolding story, that we are decoupling from a linear industrial society and so were unable to embrace, nor articulate the emergence of new organisational structures, legal frameworks, new production and design processes, not the underlying societal trend that sought greater mutualism, opportunity, freedom, diversity, and empowerment, that were in direct contrast to the increasing unfairness and monoculture of a wholly consumer orientated society.

In this non-linear world, companies and organisations premised upon the old orthodoxies, linear, industrial-scale models must think and embrace the unthinkable and work out how they innovate to survive. Whether we survey the political, media, engineering, NGO, educational or healthcare landscape we can identify an increasing sophistication in how we are responding to the challenges of living in a more complex world. At the same time, there is the ever-increasing acceleration of the collapse of the old ways of command and control. Every work of art, said Wassily Kandinsky, is a child of its time.

And so to learn new ways of doing these things we have to hack the future.

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Penguin: Military Breaks Educational Promises, Congress Complicit

Ethics, Military
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Who, Me?

This upsets me.  Especially when compared to what is being spent on toxic aircraft.

Broken Promise to an Army Veteran: Change to GI Bill Proves Costly

A cost-cutting change to the GI Bill has cost hundreds of thousands of veterans thousands of dollars, reports Winston Ross.

After serving 14 months in Iraq, U.S. Army Sgt. Hayleigh Perez planned to use her GI Bill benefits to get a master’s degree and become a physician’s assistant. When she enlisted, the government was paying for any veteran who signed up after Sept. 11 to go to any public university in America.

When she got out, she got screwed. Twice. A change in the GI bill forced Perez to apply to in-state schools if she wanted free tuition, and then a university in her home state of North Carolina determined that she wasn’t a resident—because she’d spent two years with her active-duty husband Jose in Texas, where he was reassigned in 2009.

Read full article.

 

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Marcus Aurelius: Advances in Corporate Espionage Neglect of Counterintelligence and Commercial Intelligence

Commerce, IO Deeds of War
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Marcus Aurelius

Spies And Co.

By Eamon Javers

New York Times, October 25, 2012

Washington — SUDDENLY, Washington is extremely concerned about Chinese espionage.

Last month, the White House blocked a Chinese company from operating a wind farm near a sensitive Navy base in Oregon. Next, the House Intelligence Committee said two Chinese telecommunications firms were manufacturing equipment that could be used to spy on the United States, and Defense Secretary Leon E. Panetta told business leaders that the country faced the risk of a “cyber-Pearl Harbor” — an attack that could come from terrorist groups or a country like China. Finally, during Monday’s presidential debate, Mitt Romney warned that the Chinese were “stealing our intellectual property, our patents, our designs, our technology, hacking into our computers.”

There’s no question that American companies today are under surveillance: I’ve learned that the F.B.I. has obtained a video taken inside a hotel in China that shows Chinese agents rifling through an American businessman’s room, according to two sources familiar with the tape, which the F.B.I. has been playing as a warning for corporate security experts. But while the
Chinese spying push is aggressive, American companies have been tapped, bugged and spied on for more than a hundred years. As often as not, the perpetrators have been other Americans — motivated not by patriotism for a foreign flag, but by simple profit.

Read full article.

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