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Richard Wright: F-22 Raptor Goes Under the Bus

03 Economy, 04 Inter-State Conflict, 07 Other Atrocities, 10 Security, Budgets & Funding, Commerce, Commercial Intelligence, Corruption, Cultural Intelligence, Government, IO Deeds of War, IO Impotency, Military, Money, Banks & Concentrated Wealth, Officers Call, Power Behind-the-Scenes/Special Interests, Technologies
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Richard Wright

It is amazing that the L.A. Times would publish this story. Maybe even the ‘lame stream media' is starting to wake up to the foolishness of the MICC.

High costs, malfunctions plague F-22 Raptor fighter jets

W. J. Hennigan

Los Angeles Times, 6 August 2011

The fleet of 158 F-22 planes — costing $412 million each — has never entered combat and has been grounded since May 3 because of a government safety investigation. The probe follows more than a dozen incidents in which oxygen was cut off to pilots, a problem suspected of contributing to at least one fatal accident.

Read more….

Phi Beta Iota:  The Los Angeles Times was among several mainstream newspapers that refused $100,000 full page ads against the Iraq War.  Like CNN and Fareed Zakaria, they do not stray from the approved party line.  This is a very clear sign (to us, at least) that Wall Street is throwing DoD under the bus.  Leon Panetta probably has no idea what is about to hit him–hyping Al Qaeda will not match a deliberate Wall Street shut down of all support for the Military-Industrial-Congressional-Comples (MICC).  A Civil War is in progress in the USA, on multiple fronts.

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Marcus Aurelius: Israel Plots to Cripple Iranian Cyber

04 Inter-State Conflict, 05 Iran, 07 Other Atrocities, 08 Wild Cards, 09 Justice, 10 Security, 11 Society, Computer/online security, Corruption, Cyberscams, malware, spam, IO Deeds of War, Military, Peace Intelligence, Power Behind-the-Scenes/Special Interests, Technologies
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Marcus Aurelius

(1) Wish the Israelis every success, but their chances are likely decreased thanks to leaks;

(2) Wonder if GEN Alexander of USCYBERCOM will seek to re-negotiate his deal IOT report directly to POTUS?

Israeli Military Reportedly Plotting to Cripple Iran in Cyberspace

Published August 07, 2011

EXTRACT:

“Israel has two principal targets in Iran’s cyberspace,” said a defense source with close knowledge of the cyber war preparations. “The first is its military nuclear program and its military establishment. The second is Iran’s civil infrastructure. Attacking both, we hope, will cripple the entire country’s cyberspace.”

Phi Beta Iota:  What Israel is saying, particularly with regard to its second target spread, is that it is waging undeclared unjust war against Iran and the people of Iran.  To blithely announce that the civil infrastructure of another country is “fair game” should call into question the sanity and legitimacy of the perpetrators.

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Fareed Zakaria: Why Defense Should be Cut BIG

03 Economy, Commerce, Corruption, Cultural Intelligence, Government, IO Deeds of War, Military
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Why defense spending should be cut

By 

August 3, 2011

Fareed Zakaria: “the U.S. defense establishment is the world’s largest socialist economy”

Phi Beta Iota:  This talented individual has never left the “lane in the road” assigned to him.  He thrives on “civility” and not questioning what passes for conventional wisdom among the elites.   As much as all of us who have been saying this for decades are glad to hear him speak such common sense, what this really tells us is that Wall Street is now ready to sacrifice the Military-Industrial-Congressional Complex (MICC) and all their jobs, to save its own multi-million dollar bonuses.  Banks and Big Oil are the winners, the public continues to lose precisely because no one is actually representing the public interest.

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Koko: US Budget Math -1.5T, + 10T = 8.5T Debt INCREASE

03 Economy, Blog Wisdom, Budgets & Funding, Corruption, Government
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Koko

Koko Signs:  One more time….

Debt “agreement” cuts $1.5 trillion over ten years, while leaving in place the existing budget that borrows 1 trillion a year for ten years.

The net debt INCREASE is 8.5 trillion.

The US Government at it is formed at present, and dominated by a two-party system that shuts out all common sense while embracing Big Oil, Wall Street, and the Military-Industrial-Congressional Complex (MICC), is incapable of governing Of, By, and For We the People.

S&P got it right.  The truth at any cost lowers all other costs.

Any questions?

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DefDog: Leon Panetta AQ Fear-Mongering w/o a Clue

10 Security, 11 Society, Budgets & Funding, Corruption, Cultural Intelligence, Government, IO Deeds of War, IO Impotency, Military, Threats
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DefDog

It is obvious that this man has no clue.  We are developing fighters
(F-22/35) that have no threat that cannot be handled by the F-117 (which is the be all to end all) but we are dangerously close to imploding if more budget cuts come our way?  Strengthen the force, reduce the technology (which doesn't work in most cases) and let's put DoD on the right path, defense of the Nation (and not police force of the world)……

Leon Panetta Hypes al Qaeda to Ward Off More Defense Cuts

Steve Clemons

The Atlantic, 6 August 2011

EXTRACT:

It seems that one week, al Qaeda is on the run and “near collapse” and the next, al Qaeda remains the reason why the US needs to continue to spend hundreds of billions of dollars on a Pentagon designed to fight the wrong wars.  This is irresponsible hyping of a threat to justify massive defense spending during a period of real fiscal stress.

Phi Beta Iota:  Daniel Ellsberg had it exactly right when he lectured Henry Kissinger in the 1970's on Viet-Nam:

The danger is, you’ll become like a moron. You’ll become incapable of learning from most people in the world, no matter how much experience they have in their particular areas that may be much greater than yours” [because of your blind faith in the value of your narrow and often incorrect secret information].

Panetta would be well-served by attending to what  Bob Seelert, Chairman of Saatchi & Saatchi Worldwide (New York) has to say:

When things are not going well, until you get the truth out on the table, no matter how ugly, you are not in a position to deal with it.

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Seth Godin: Creativity Demands Deep Understanding

Advanced Cyber/IO, Blog Wisdom, Collective Intelligence, Ethics, Hacking
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Seth Godin

Bypassing the leap

Every now and then, a creative act comes out of nowhere, a giant leap, a new way of thinking apparently woven out of a brand new material.

Most of the the time, though, creativity is the act of reassembling many elements that are already known. That's why domain knowledge is so critical.

The screenwriter who understands how to take the build that went into the classic Greg Morris episode of the Dick Van Dyke show and integrate it with the Maurce Chevalier riff from the Marx Bros… Or the way Moby took his encyclopedic knowledge of music and turned into a record that sold millions… if you don't have awareness and an analytical understanding of what worked before, you can't build on it.

That's one of the reasons that the recent incarnation of the Palm failed. The fact that the president of the company had never used an iPhone left them only one out: to make a magical leap.

It's not enough to be aware of the domain you're working in, you need to understand it. Noticing things and being curious about how they work is the single most common trait I see in creative people. Once you can break the components down, you can put them back together into something brand new.