The truth at any cost lowers all other costs — curated by former US spy Robert David Steele.
A Conversation with Sherry Turkle
Sherry Turkle
David Thorburn
Books by Shirley Turkle
1984 The Second Self: Computers and the Human Spirit
1997 Life on the Screen: Identity in the Age of the Internet
2011 Alone Together: Why We Expect More from Technology and Less from Each Other
Shows that the Pentagon does not understand Cyber Warfare…..for example, when a virus is unleashed it can no longer be controlled – the epitome of collateral damage…
Cyber-weapons developed by Pentagon to enter online warfare soon
By IB Times Staff Reporter | June 1, 2011 6:05 AM EDT
International Business Times
The Pentagon has designed a list of cyber weapons which include viruses that can disrupt important networks belonging to the enemy, a report in the Washington Post said.
Phi Beta Iota: This is criminally insane. An honest president and Congress should go to ALL STOP on this idiocy, while implementing the original 1994 Sounding the Alarm suggestions.
Advisers urge military to rely less on drones, more on expertise
Eli Lake, 1 June 2011
The Washington Times
Military operations in Afghanistan rely too much on intelligence gathered by unmanned drones, often exclude important publicly available data and do not focus enough on the recruitment of human agents, a Pentagon report says.
The report by the Defense Science Board, a panel that advises the Pentagon, says that the defense budget does not properly direct funding for open-source intelligence collection – information available to the public and gathered from a wide variety of sources, including academic papers and newspapers.
“Overall, these problems tend to exclude valuable sources of social and behavioral science data, including human geography,” according to the report.
It also says analysts often are overwhelmed by the volume of data collected by ball-shaped sensors outfitted on the bottom of military aircraft and from high-tech camera and radar pods placed on blimps and sometimes even telephone poles. While the technology has helped pinpoint and kill enemy combatants and to detect cellphone conversations on the battlefield, its created a “a crisis in processing, exploitation, and dissemination” of the information.
DSB May 2011 Counterinsurgency (COIN) Intelligence, Surveillance, and Reconnaissance (ISR) Operations
Phi Beta Iota: There is NOTHING NEW here. All of this was in General Al Gray's seminal article, “Global Intelligence Challenges in the 1990's” (American Intelligence Journal, Winter 1989-1990) and in the original modern intelligence reform book, ON INTELLIGENCE: Spies and Secrecy in an Open World (AFCEA, 2000). Joe Markowitz continues his polite urgings on the importance of open source intelligence, but in this corrupt environment he is as effective as Brent Scowcroft with Dick Cheney. The Department of Defense is OUT OF CONTROL. It lacks intelligence and integrity. This will not change until we get a Secretary of Defense committed to intelligence and integrity; OR we get an honest President, a Congress that fulfills its Article 1 responsibilities, and an Open Source Agency that can empower the public the way that Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, and George Mason all agreed was necessary if the Republic were to be preserved.
Continue reading “Defense Science Board to DoD: Get Brain + RECAP”
Louis Brandeis
Beyond 5 Stars–A Classic that Makes Justice Brandeis a Founding Father, June 1, 2011
I am shocked to not see any reviews of this book, and also shocked to see how reasonably priced the book is–this is a CLASSIC, a collector's item, and for anyone who wishes to restore the Republic in the USA, and help other countries avoid the terrible mistakes we have made in allowing bankers free rein.
The book is available free online “by the chapter” courtesy of the University of Louisville Louis D. Brandeis School of Law, but I strongly support the publishers who have provided this incredibly valuable non-fiction at such a good price. Use Inside the Book to look more closely.
Eric Hughes, whom I met at the Hackers Conference in Silicon Valley in the 1990's, created the concept of anonymous banking, and now we can move even further beyond that: we do not need banks. We certainly do not need banks outside of local communities. Resources can now be aggregated without banks, and as one of those who strongly supports Ron Paul's “End the Fed” initiative, and who has pioneered using open sources of intelligence to restore transparency and eradicate corruption, I think that both political parties should be impeached for their continuing cozy relationship with the banks at the expense of We the People.
Below are nine books and one DVD that build on the case made by Justice Brandeis. Our government–and the banks and financial institutions on Wall Street–are an axis of evil vastly more harmful to the public interest in the USA and all over the world, than any band of terrorists or dictators ever could be. The enemy is within our walls, and only an educated citizenry rooted in the philosophy of liberty and self-governance can root that enemy out. This book is a “primer” of lasting value and would also make a superb gift.
See Also:
Griftopia: Bubble Machines, Vampire Squids, and the Long Con That Is Breaking America
Reckless Endangerment: How Outsized Ambition, Greed, and Corruption Led to Economic Armageddon
Juggernaut: Why the System Crushes the Only People Who Can Save It
Come Home, America: The Rise and Fall (and Redeeming Promise) of Our Country
Secrets of the Temple: How the Federal Reserve Runs the Country
The Battle for the Soul of Capitalism
Rule by Secrecy: The Hidden History That Connects the Trilateral Commission, the Freemasons, and the Great Pyramids
Running on Empty: How the Democratic and Republican Parties Are Bankrupting Our Future and What Americans Can Do About It
Grand Illusion: The Myth of Voter Choice in a Two-Party Tyranny
Election 2008: Lipstick on the Pig (Substance of Governance; Legitimate Grievances; Candidates on the Issues; Balanced Budget 101; Call to Arms: Fund We Not Them; Annotated Bibliography)
James Fergusson
I wish I had the time and money to buy and read this book, but I don't. However, in posting a forward by Chuck Spinney (1980's whistle-blower on Pentagon fraud, waste, and abuse) at Phi Beta Iota the Public Intelligence Blog, I linked to the Amazon Page and saw the gap here. Below are just two paragraphs from a great review by Chuck Leddy at the Boston Globe search for it, it is worth it:
EXTRACT 1: But what these Western reports never quite explained, Fergusson notes, is how the Taliban brought law (however harsh) and order to a nation that had rarely seen either. Today, Fergusson reports, the Taliban are riding a growing wave of anti-Americanism and anti-corruption sentiment triggered by both US military operations and strong support for Karzai, who is considered unusually corrupt by the standards of a country where governmental corruption is the norm.
EXTRACT 2: One disillusioned local official tells Fergusson, “Warlordism and insecurity have returned, and the people are fed up. They are ready to welcome the Taliban back again.” Indeed, the Taliban are coming back just when the Obama administration has reduced US forces in Afghanistan. Fergusson makes clear the differences between the Taliban and Al Qaeda. Many of those inside the Taliban told Fergusson that they would welcome an agreement with Washington that would swap the exclusion of Al Qaeda from Afghanistan for an American pullout and foreign aid.
To complement this “third hand” appreciation, here is one book that I consider a six star and beyond on Afghanistan, and that I have read and reviewed–it cuts to the heart of all that the USA does NOT do:
Surrender to Kindness: One Man's Epic Journey for Love and Peace
Pogo reigns supreme…..
Pentagon Will Consider Cyberattacks Acts of War
By DAVID E. SANGER and ELISABETH BUMILLER
New York Times, May 31, 2011
WASHINGTON — The Pentagon, trying to create a formal strategy to deter cyberattacks on the United States, plans to issue a new strategy soon declaring that a computer attack from a foreign nation can be considered an act of war that may result in a military response.
Phi Beta Iota: These people literally have no clue and are simply striving for budget share before Pentagon right-sizing gets underway. We absolutely guarantee that what the Pentagon and the US Intelligence Community do to their own employees every day (including forbidding thumb drives now) qualifies as a crime against humanity as well as an act of war. The USG is its own worst enemy in every possible sense.
See Also:
2011 Cyber-Command or IO 21 + IO Roots
Bob Gates, Chief Maintenance Clerk, Talks Crap — and the Wall Street Journal Goes Along…
Defense and the Deficit–Busting the Defense Bubble, Ending Defense Entitlement
Reference: The Pentagon Labyrinth
Review (Guest): The Pentagon Labyrinth
Review: Grand Theft Pentagon–Tales of Corruption and Profiteering in the War on Terror
Millionaires Control 39% of the World’s Wealth
By Robert Frank
Wall Street Journal, May 31, 2011
Last year was another good year for millionaires – though their pace of growth is slowing.
According to a new report by Boston Consulting Group out today, the number of millionaire households in the world grew by 12.2% in 2010, to 12.5 million. (BCG defines millionaires as those with $1 million or more in investible assets, excluding homes, luxury goods and ownership in one’s own company).
The U.S. continues to lead the world in millionaires, with 5.2 million millionaire households, followed by Japan with 1.5 million millionaire households, China with 1.1 million and the U.K. with 570,000. Singapore leads the world in “millionaire density,” or the percentage of millionaires, with 15.5% of its population now millionaire households.
The most important trend, however, is the global wealth distribution. According to the report, the world’s millionaires represent 0.9% of the world’s population but control 39% of the world’s wealth, up from 37% in 2009. Their wealth now totals $47.4 trillion in investible wealth, up from $41.8 trillion in 2009.
Phi Beta Iota: The single most consistent precondition for revolution across centuries has been the over-concentration of wealth. We're there. Now all we need is a few precipitants.
See Also:
Continue reading “<1% of World Population Controls 39% of All Wealth”
