The issue that Dr. Garigue articulated as well as anyone I have seen is that Information Security is not just security or just information. I have [this] slide printed out hanging above my desk for several years.
Most security people struggle with this concept, and try to separate these two concepts, and if they do, they miss two very important issues. First, they miss the opportunity to look at security as a business enabler. Dr. Garigue pointed out that because cars have brakes, we can drive faster. Security as a business enabler should absolutely be the starting point for enterprise information security programs. One excellent example of this is identity federation, which enables an easier integration across companies and technologies and puts stronger identity credentials on the wire in the process. Secondly, if your security model reflects some CYA abstraction of reality instead of reality itself your security model is flawed. I explored this endemic myopia in a seriesofposts on decentralization and security. JSB and John Hagel taught us that intgeration and friction cannot be separated, attempts to do so lead to confusion and disorder, and this is the heart of the issue Dr. Garigue's work is articulating. If your business and systems are decentralizing with both hands, and your security model is predicated on centralized, iron fisted control, then the only place your security model works is on the whiteboard.
The Iran Threat in the Age of Real-Axis-of-Evil Expansion
by Edward S. Herman and David Peterson
It is intriguing to see how whoever the United States and Israel find interfering with their imperial or dispossession plans is quickly demonized and becomes a threat and target for that Real-Axis-of-Evil (RAE), and hence their NATO allies and, with less intensity, much of the rest of the “international community” (IC, meaning ruling elites, not ordinary citizens). If and when the need arises, any bit of news that is damaging to the targeted state will be fed into the demonization process — and in the marvelous propaganda system of the West, the grossest distortions will be swallowed and regurgitated without much guilt or apology, even upon the exposure of exceptional gullibility and dishonesty. The dishonesty, gullibility, double standard, and hypocrisy are handled with an aplomb that Pravda and Izvestia could never muster in the Soviet era.
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Edward S. Herman is professor emeritus of finance at the Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania and has written extensively on economics, political economy, and the media. Among his books are Corporate Control, Corporate Power (Cambridge University Press, 1981), The Real Terror Network (South End Press, 1982), and, with Noam Chomsky, The Political Economy of Human Rights (South End Press, 1979), and Manufacturing Consent (Pantheon, 2002). David Peterson is an independent journalist and researcher based in Chicago
Phi Beta Iota: See the table at the Monthly Review Zine to truly appreciate the spectacular relevance of the total commentary by the lead author who with Noam Chomsky was a half-century ahead of the pack in understanding how Potemkin Democracy might be foisted on a deliberately disengaged public.
Product Description: America is on the brink of a financial meltdown. I.O.U.S.A. boldly examines the rapidly growing national debt and its consequences for the United States. Burdened with an ever-expanding government and military, increased international competition, overextended entitlement programs, and debts to foreign countries that are becoming impossible to honor, America must mend its spendthrift ways or face an economic disaster of epic proportions. Over 125 minutes of bonus materials, including exclusive interviews with Warren Buffett, Alan Greenspan and others.
I.O.U.S.A. educates people about the very real and very dangerous financial problems our government is facing. The producers of the film pull no punches here and they don't sugar-coat it; and that was the right thing to do. The way Americans live today is essentially “living for the moment” without thinking of the importance of saving money for a rainy day; and the film goes into great, great detail highlighting that the American government does the same. I will tell you just some of the points made by this movie; although it will seem as if I've given it all away I assure you that I haven't. Continue reading “Review (Guest) DVD: I.O.U.S.A. DVD on US Bankruptcy”
WMR has learned from knowledgeable sources within the US financial community that an alarming confidential and limited distribution document is circulating among senior members of Congress and their senior staff members that is warning of a bleak future for the United States if it does not quickly get its financial house in order. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi is among those who have reportedly read the document.
The document is being called the “C & R” document because it reportedly states that if the United States defaults on loans and debt underwriting from China, Japan, and Russia, all of which are propping up the United States government financially, and the United States unilaterally cancels the debts, America can expect a war that will have disastrous results for the United States and the world. “Conflict” is the “C word” in the document.
The other scenario is that the federal government will be forced to drastically raise taxes in order to pay off debts to foreign countries to the point that the American people will react with a popular revolution against the government. “Revolution” is the document's “R word.”
Click on the title to read the rest of the Madsen report. Commentary below the fold.
The Obama Administration means well, no question about it. They simply do not know what they do not know, and no one within the US Intelligence Community appears capable of speaking truth to power.
The truth that needs to be spoken is that Washington lacks both integrity and intelligence (as in thoughtful holistic decision-making). Washington lacks a strategic analytic model, it lacks a commitment to eradicating the ten high-level threats to humanity (terrorism is ninth, a traffic accident, nothing more), and it lacks a process for harmonizing budgets and behavior across twelve core policy domains as illustrated below.
6 Star Holy Cow! “Insider” Speaks Truth, Tars Both Parties,
July 25, 2005
Peter G. Peterson
Edit of 9 Jan 15 to elevate to 6 stars. In the context of the hundreds of books I have reviewed (see my master list easily found, Worth a Look: Democracy Lost & Found Essay, Book Review Blurbs and Links, this book stands out as one of the earliest and most thoughtful — still a classic, still relevant. SIX STARS.
Edit of 16 Apr 08 to add more links on the bad and the good.
I find it extraordinary to have the Chairman of the Council on Foreign Relations, which I have always considered to be an old man's club of established elites, largely out of touch with 80% of the real world (that is to say, the 80% that has almost nothing in the way of wealth, health, or rights), step up to the plate and speak truth.This book addresses the second core issue in America's future, i.e. the twin deficits that are not only going to kill the business of America, but also deprive the children of America of their future. (Lapham addresses the first: restoration of honest democracy). In combination, the $7 trillion deficit in federal spending, and the $500 billion a year trade deficit, with roughly $2 billion in foreign loans being required every single day to keep America afloat, both suggest that we are snorting political cocaine and every one of us is a damn fool for allowing two political parties to get away with selling us down the river.As the author points out in the Preface, when the International Monetary Fund (IMF) cautions its own master, the USA, that it is in danger of becoming an insolvent Third World country, running up bills that “would require an immediate and permanent 60 percent hike in the federal income tax, or a 50 percent cut in Social Security and Medicare benefits,” we cannot say we have not been warned.The author is balanced, focused, deliberative, and earnest. He carefully explains how both the “mainstream” political parties have completely abdicated all responsibility, and completely betrayed the public interest in their eagerness to sell legislation to the highest corporate bidders.
There is one grievous flaw in the book. In concluding that we can only survive by educating ourselves and then finding our voice, the author neglects to address the fast means of achieving short-term fiscal recovery in tandem with campaign finance and electoral reform: the elimination of subsidies, tax fraud, and tax relief for corporations. We have close to a trillion in unwarranted and unsound subsidies to poor agricultural, fisheries, forestry, and minerals programs where every dollar in subsidy is yielding high long-term costs to the taxpayer citizen; we have over $50 billion a year in documented import-export tax fraud ($25 rocket engines going out, $3000 toothbrushes coming in–advanced money laundering and tax avoidance); finally, the corporate share of federal tax revenue has dropped from 32% to 6% in the past twenty years, with corporations like Halliburton paying $15M in taxes on billions in profit–easy to fix: pay taxes on the profit declared to the stockholders.
See also the more recently published book by John Bogle, Wall Street mutual funds giant, The Battle for the Soul of Capitalism, in which he singled the author of this book out for special praise. What this means is that Wall Street and the “elite” now realize, as Dean Garten from Yale tried to tell them in The Politics of Fortune: A New Agenda For Business Leaders, we are all in this together, government is hosed, labor is vital, morality and integrity are non-negotiable foundations for mutual prosperity. 2008 could be the foundation year of the 2nd American Republic.
