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Journal: Stupid Is As Stupid Does–Israel…Again

08 Wild Cards
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Chuck Spinney

With the possible exception of Syria, Turkey is the most welcoming and friendliest country in the Mediterranean.  It is also the Islamic country that is on the friendliest terms with Israel.  It predecessor, the Ottoman Empire, had a distinguished history of providing a welcoming sanctuary for Jew persecuted by Christians, particular those in Spain.  But beneath their gracious exterior, there is a strain of national pride and a stubbornness that is as strong as any country I have ever visited.  Turks are very proud of being Turks.  Everyone with a modicum of intelligence in the eastern Med knows that if you insult and push a Turk into a corner; be he a low level peasant or a minister, he will get his dander up and dig in, and you will have a real problem on your hands.

That is why Israeli Foreign minister Ayalon's outrageous personal insult to the Turkish ambassador was so stupid.  As anyone who knows the Turks would expect, the Turkish government swiftly reacted with a harsh unequivocal ultimatum — “Apologize or else.”  Israel blinked and was quick to back down — and Turkey set an example for the world, particularly the United States.

The attached article by Uri Avneri, a hero of the 1948 war and Israel's leading peace activist is the best summary of this revealing incident I have yet read.

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Journal: Complexity to Avoid Accountability is Expensive

Capabilities-Force Structure, Leadership-Integrity, Reform
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Chuck Spinney

A central critique in my book, Defense Facts of Life: the Plans/Reality Mismatch (Westview,1985), what the trend toward increasing technical complexity in the Pentagon's weapons and organizational arrangements caused all sorts of self destructive pathologiess — which I described in considerable detail and in subsequent studies.

I defined “complexity” as a quality of the “whole” that relates the number, arrangements, and coordination of its “parts” to one's ability to comprehend the “whole.”  It follows logically that increasing complexity runs up the number, multiplies the arrangements, and makes more intricate the coordination of the “parts,” and in so doing, makes it more difficult for one to understand the “whole.” Complexity is therefore, by definition, always a subjective quality that describes a tenuous connection between the observer and the object of observation.  That is why, you should feel uneasy when some expert tells you something is complex, because he is really saying you will have difficulty understanding it, and by implication his greater knowledge puts him in a natural position of superiority upon which you should place your faith.   The natural consequence of that superiority makes complexity a dangerous quality, because it can be used to screw the minds of others.

Based on my long experience in the Pentagon, I became convinced that one reason — perhaps the main reason — why the internecine factions in the military – industrial – congressional complex (MICC) evolved a powerful bias to design and buy ever more complex (and costly) weapons and organizational arrangements that are so often ill designed for the realities of combat is that the increasing complexity makes oversight of MICC's activities more difficult.  That creates an opacity which in turn makes easier for the contending factions in the MICC  to pursue their own narrow agendas and enrich themselves with a variety of bait and switch strategies (collectively known as the front loading and political engineering power games), even when those pursuits undermine the welfare of those the MICC factions claim to protect and serve, like taxpayers and soldiers at the pointy end of the spear.

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Journal: Al Qaeda, Yemen, Somalia, and USG

08 Wild Cards, Cultural Intelligence, Government, Law Enforcement, Military, Peace Intelligence
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Berto Jongman Recommends...

Welcome to Qaedastan: Yemen's coming explosion will make today's problems seem tame.

Full Story Online

Yemen has so many dire problems that it's easy to be overwhelmed. Al Qaeda is growing in prominence, a Shiite rebellion is expanding in the north, and the threat of secession is renewed in the south. There's a brewing fight over what comes after President Ali Abdullah Saleh, age 67, who has ruled Yemen for 31 years; the country's elites are locked in a closed-door struggle to take power once he departs. Finally, and perhaps most intractably, Yemen is an environmental and resource catastrophe in the making. The country's water table is nearly depleted from years of agricultural malpractice, and its oil reserves are rapidly dwindling. This comes just when unemployment is soaring and an explosive birthrate promises only more young, jobless citizens in the coming years.

Testimony of Gregory D. Johnson, PhD Candidate, Near Eastern Studies, Princeton University, Before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee January 20, 2010

Too many problems of too severe a nature to be dealth with in isolation from one another.  “Yemen and its challenges have to be understood and dealt with as a whole.”

AQAP in Yemen and the Christmas Day Terrorist Attack  By Gregory D. Johnsen

Al Qaeda in Yemen and Somalia: A Ticking Time Bomb: Report to the Committee on Foreign Relations, United States Senate, January 21, 2010

Standard party line “prep” for invading both countries.  Most interesting tid-bit: 36 American convicts reached Yemen, ostensibly to study Arabic.  Given the number of convicts the USA produces, most jailed for marijuana possession, and in combination with the bankruptcy of the USA and the meltdown of its social and physical infrastructure, we read this in a much more catastrophic homeland manner than might be the case in the cozy ambiance of Capitol Hill.  Al Qaeda is no longer the center of gravity–domestic anger easily converted into violence is the center of gravity.

See also:

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Who’s Who in Collective Intelligence: Tom Atlee

Alpha A-D, Collective Intelligence
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Tom Atlee Home Page

Tom Atlee is a social change pioneer and visionary, author of The Tao of Democracy: Using Co-Intelligence to Create a World that Works for All and founder of the nonprofit Co-Intelligence Institute http://co-intelligence.org. The book below would not have been possible without his identification and encouragement of many of the pioneers who helped create the book, which then allowed the editor to attract additional leaders in the field to contribute to this collective endeavor.

People's Preface

Phi Beta Iota: Tom Atlee is arguably the single most influential “spirit” in convergence that is occurring as we begin the second decade of the 21st Century.  Click on Atlee to see his many listings on this site.  His most recent work, Reflections on Evolutionary Activism, is one of a handful of revolutionary reflections pertinent to the urgent need for massive non-violent social change today.

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Journal: US Government Good, Bad, & Ugly

Government, Military
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Full Glorious Story Online

GOOD

January 11, 2010

The Obama Reversal That Might Save Your Life (Sierra Club)

Washington, DC — The first anniversary of the Obama administration is only a week away. Perhaps the greatest untold story of the past year is the reversal of George Bush's eight years of environmental counterrevolution.  When Bush and Cheney stopped a century-long tradition of environmental progress, the media was flabbergasted by the unrelenting intensity of the assault. But the Obama reversal has been largely unheralded (in fact, virtually unnoticed), even though it has arguably been even more intense.

BAD

Military Helps Fund Congressional Trips (WallStreet Journal)

Records Show Pentagon Aides Who Chaperone Overseas Excursions Spend Thousands of Dollars to Foster Ties to Lawmakers

Instead, the records shed light for the first time on how the military exploits its official escort role on these trips to foster relationships with lawmakers who approve departmental budgets and top appointments. The disclosures also underscore the military's pervasive pursuit of congressional access.  Indeed, the military aides who accompany lawmakers overseas are usually the same people who lobby Congress at home; their offices are in buildings shared with lawmakers.

See Also Brazil Soliders Handing Out Food

UGLY

Soldiers Told To Stop Handing Out Food (USA Today)

PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti — Food handouts were shut off Tuesday to thousands of people at a tent city here when the main U.S. aid agency said the Army should not be distributing the packages.

“We are not supposed to get rations unless approved by AID,” Maj. Larry Jordan said.

Jordan said that approval was revoked; water was not included in the USAID decision, so the troops continued to hand out bottles of water. The State Department and USAID did not respond to requests for comment.

Phi Beta Iota: It will be interesting to see at what point ANYONE in the US military chain of command realizes that AID has issued an illegal order that should not only be ignored, it should be reported to the President via the chain of command.