Egged on by a nuclear-armed Israel and its wholly owned subsidiaries throughout the US government, a blizzard of recent news reports make it clear that President Obama's foreign policy team is becoming obsessed with Iran, particularly, but not exclusively, its nascent atomic energy program.
Arab Chuckles Over SecState
Obsessions are dangerous, because in any conflict, be it political, economic, or military, they create vulnerabilities that can be exploited by one's adversaries — not to mention one's purported allies. That is because obsessions shape the Orientation of one's Observation – Orientation – Decision – Action (OODA) loop in a way that induces one to see and act on what one “wants” to see rather than what “is.” When this happens, one's decision cycle looks inward and becomes disconnected from its environment, and as a result, the actions decided on will not have the desired outcome. The mismatch between desires and reality will then feed back into subsequent decision cycle, and if the obsession is not corrected inside the decision-maker's orientation , the mismatches will amplify themselves in subsequent actions. Left unaddressed only one outcome is possible: what the American strategist Colonel John Boyd, the inventor of the OODA Loop, used to call “incestuous amplification,” or an increasingly self-referencing decision making spiral, that by “talking to itself, succumbs to an inevitable evolution into chaos.
Starting in the fall of 2008, the Center for Investigative Reporting and The Center for Public Integrity fielded a team of reporters to examine how effectively governments at all levels had managed money and programs dedicated to homeland security. The result was a series of stories — and an interactive map — that have been combined into a single collaborative website
Phi Beta Iota: What we really admire is the team's organization: Editoral Team, Reporting Team, Fact Checking, Data Analysis, Web/Multimedia, Web Design, Media, and Funding.
We now learn – from Der Spiegel last week and today’s NYT – that Goldman Sachs has not only helped or encouraged some European governments to hide a large part of their debts, but it also endeavored to do so for Greece as recently as last November. These actions are fundamentally destabilizing to the global financial system, as they undermine: the eurozone area; all attempts to bring greater transparency to government accounting; and the most basic principles that underlie well-functioning markets. When the data are all lies, the outcomes are all bad – see the subprime mortgage crisis for further detail.
A single rogue trader can bring down a bank – remember the case of Barings. But a single rogue bank can bring down the world’s financial system.
Goldman will dismiss this as “business as usual” and, to be sure, a few phone calls around Washington will help ensure that Goldman’s primary supervisor – now the Fed – looks the other way.
But the affair is now out of Ben Bernanke’s hands, and quite far from people who are easily swayed by the White House. It goes immediately to the European Commission, which has jurisdiction over eurozone budget issues. Faced with enormous pressure from those eurozone countries now on the hook for saving Greece, the Commission will surely launch a special audit of Goldman and all its European clients.
Phi Beta Iota: The balance of the above article is a “must read.”
Eva Bartlett, The Electronic Intifada, 15 February 2010
One of Many Wells Destroyed
With most of Gaza's border region wells, cisterns and water lines destroyed by Israeli forces during last winter's attacks, farmers have been largely left with no option but to wait for heavier rains.
“Israeli soldiers started intensively bulldozing the land in 2003. But they finished the job in the last war on Gaza,” says Hamdan Abu Taima, owner of 30 dunams (1 dunam is approximate to 1,000 square meters) dangerously close to the buffer zone.
In an interview on MSNBC this morning, newly retiring Sen. Evan Bayh declared the American political system “dysfunctional,” riddled with “brain-dead partisanship” and permanent campaigning. Flatly denying any possibility that he'd seek the presidency or any other higher office, Bayh argued that the American people needed to deliver a “shock” to Congress by voting incumbents out en masse and replacing them with people interested in reforming the process and governing for the good of the people, rather than deep-pocketed special-interest groups.
Phi Beta Iota: For some time now, since we published ELECTION 2008: Lipstick on the Pig, we have sought to do three things: 1) show the 70% that did not vote for President Barack Obama that Electoral Reform is the only thing that will cure Washington, and also the only thing needed to restore the Constitution and the Republic; 2) show Barack Obama, beginning with a memorandum under his hotel room door in Des Moines that he needs to eject the partisans from the White House and begin governing with a coaltion cabinet and an open source decision support network; and 3) show all those who claim to be interested in transpartisan or post-partisan processes that holding hands and singing kum-ba-ya together is not enough–a Strategic Analytic Model is needed, along with a Policy-Budget Outreach Web that allows all citizens to be connected with all relevant information so as to have informed appreciative dialog online, harnessing all humans minds to create a Smart Nation.
We recommend a three-pronged strategy for liberty:
1) Electoral Reform at the state and local level beginning with wide open ballot access for 2010 or we recall every Governor and Secretary of State who persists in protecting the two-party tyranny through restricted ballot access
2) Electoral Reform at the national level–any Member not sponsoring and voting for the Electoral Reform Act in time for 2010 (first four provisions) will be rejected at election or recalled if a Senator not up for reelection.
3) Aggressive state nullification of all federal programs inclusive of income tax levies until such time as the Secretary of the Treasury and the Federal Reserve are fully transparent.
We strongly support elected President Barack Obama and elected Vice President Joe Biden. If they cleanse the White House of the partisan hacks (Emmanuel, Axelrod, and Plouffe), get themselves a Chief of Staff that can manage in the public chief, and get themselves an intelligence community leadership able to deliver public decision support on the ten threats and twelve policies to all levels of government, there is every reason to believe that this Administration can still be rescued from itself and that Barack Obama can rise to his rhetorical potential with real non-partisan governance. Absent such a change, he will not be re-elected and an Independent promising a coalition cabinet and an end to winner take all control of Congress will probably win in 2012. America is awake, fed up, and on the move.
See Also (Graphics, Reviews of Solutions, Secession, and Problems)
