I am dismayed by the cavalier “selection” of Dr. J. Scott Cameron to be the new president of the National Intelligence University. This is not an individual who knows anything about the craft of intelligence at all four levels of operations and analysis, nor is this an individual who has demonstrated integrity or innovation in any relevant form. He is absolutely not qualified by past performance or present capabilities to assume the top position for any major university, least of all what should be the top focal point in the USA for holistic analytics across all domains.
Bestselling author James B. Stewart's newsbreaking investigation of our era's most high-profile perjurers, revealing the alarming extent of this national epidemic.
Our system of justice rests on a simple proposition: that witnesses will raise their hands and tell the truth. In Tangled Webs, James B. Stewart reveals in vivid detail the consequences of the perjury epidemic that has swept our country, undermining the very foundation of our courts.
With many prosecutors, investigators, and participants speaking for the first time, Tangled Webs goes behind the scene of the trials of media and homemaking entrepreneur Martha Stewart; top White House political adviser Lewis “Scooter” Libby; home-run king Barry Bonds; and Wall Street money manager Bernard Madoff.
Guest Review
5.0 out of 5 stars A first-rate story teller takes on the lying addiction of the rich and famous, April 19, 2011 By F. Hayes-Roth (Monterey, CA USA) – See all my reviews (REAL NAME)
Lying seems epidemic in American society. Stewart focuses his superb writing skills on the general problem of perjury and lying under oath by highlighting the cases of four celebrated liars: Martha Stewart (no apparent relation to the author), Scooter Libby, Barry Bonds, and Bernie Madoff. For each of these, he asks the same question: “Why would people with so much to lose put so much at risk by lying under oath?” Ultimately, the answer becomes obvious: “They thought they could get away with it.”
UPDATE: 7 Oct 10 Rally Point Identified for 30 Oct Sanity Rally
Sanity Rally (Inside the Red Dotted Lines)Jon Stewart Full Story Online
Jon Stewart Plans ‘Restoring Sanity' Rally to Counter Glenn Beck Event–October 30
“We're looking for the people who think shouting is annoying, counterproductive, and terrible for your throat, who feel that the loudest voices shouldn't be the only ones that get heard, and who believe that the only time it's appropriate to draw a Hitler mustache on some is when that person is actually Hitler,” Stewart says on his Daily Show website.
The date, Oct. 30, “has no significance whatsoever,” Stewart says gleefully. “Ours is a rally for the people who've been too busy to go to rallies, who actually have lives and families and jobs (or are looking for jobs) — not so much the Silent Majority as the Busy Majority. If we had to sum up the political view of our participants in a single sentence . . . we couldn't. That's sort of the point.”
. . . . . . .
And lest anyone think it's just about answering Tea Party conservatives and the Beck-a-palooza last Aug. 28, Comedy Central's other wild and crazy news satirist, Stephen Colbert of the Colbert Report, says he'll hold a competing rally the same day, called “The March to Keep Fear Alive” to combat “creeping reasonableness.” Stewart's people “want to replace our fear with reason,” Colbert wrote. “But never forget ‘reason,' is just one letter away form ‘treason.'”
Short Review
Phi Beta Iota: These two individuals are making a huge contribution. The is no underestimating the common sense of the American people BUT they have to be engaged, their voices heard, and integrity maintained in the three branches of government.
1) Chuck Spinney on how our partisan “leaders” are disconnected from reality and leading us over a cliff, with reference to John Boyd.
2. An extract and link to the always brilliant CounterPunch where David Michael Green discusses the core issue: Can America be salvaged?
3. A Phi Beta Iota editorial commentary on Thomas Kuhn (The Structure of Scientific Revolutions), Robert Steele (Paradigms of Failure, Data Pathologies), and Howard Zinn (A Power Governments Cannot Repress).
CHUCK SPINNEY: The article in Counterpunch by David Michael Green, “Can America be Salvaged?” is an brilliant expository argument describing what are in effect the destructive outcomes of self-referencing/incestuously amplifying OODA loops that are becoming ever more disconnected from reality.
This is the budget created to support Col Vincent Stewart, USMC, then the action officer for surveying Open Source Intelligence (OSINT) reequirements and capabilities across the Department of Defense (DoD). This amount–not necessarily these specific priorities–was offered to the U.S. Special Operations Command (USSOCOM), which continues to have the only full-spectrum OSINT capability in the USA, but turned down by subordinates to the Combatant Commander who did not understand that the Long War is a war of both ideas, and universal coverage at the neighborhood level of granulaty, as Dr. Stephen Cambone so wisely called for in January 2004.
If $1.5 Billion is added to this budget for 50 Community Information-Sharing and Sense-Making Networks, a total of no less than $3 billion a year, and ideally $3.5 billion a year, is recommended.
This book is more of a scholarly work and has eye-glazing detail. However, as best I can tell, this is the single best and most carefully documented book, with the stellar advantage of having as a co-author the Honorable Bill Hendon, who is not only a former Representative (R-NC) but was on the POW/MIA beat while there.
I am very very very angry. Our politicians, both Republican and Democratic, have betrayed us all, and this brings me to tears, betrayed the honorable warriors who became POWs or were MIA in Viet-Nam.
There are several points that grab me:
Over 1,500 POWs still known to be in Viet-Nam and probably alive.
Viet-Nam had a clear strategy for capturing AND KEEPING ALIVE our personel in order to charge the US for reparations after the war was inevitably won by the Vietnamese
The authors explicitly suggest that Senator John McCain has been fully witting of the reality of how many have been left behind, and complicit in our federal government's deliberate decision to abandon them rather than pay Viet-Nam the compensation they appear to fully merit given our violation of the Geneva Convention and our intrusion into the civil war between North and South.
I hold the authors of this book, and the excrutiating detail that they have assembled, in the greatest regard.
It is now clear to me that the Federal Government as it is now constituted, cannot be trusted. We need Electoral Reform, open books, and an end to secrecy.
It was a very long flight to Oakland (to attend Bioneers), and this movie got me through the last two hours. It is superb. It should be required viewing for every citizen, every official, every foundation leader, every elected person. It is well-crafted, credible, absorbing, and thought-provoking.
Highlights:
* How the selfishness of one “run-away” infected person can kill tens of thousands and defeat the pre-quarantine containment process.
* Failure to control *each* passenger by name in the delicate transition from infected aircraft to controlled environment is the one thing that can destroy a containment.
* Failure to be candid with citizens and put public ran-away notice with photo of the run-away makes the situation much worse. Failure to tell the run-aways office workers and home family the exact threat they represent negates their value in bringing the run-away in before they infect hundreds more directly, thousands indirectly.
* The movie provides a fascination depiction of the scientific investigative process, while also depicting the political tensions among the Mayor, the Governor, and others, each seeking to balance archaic political calculations with unknown biological “runaway train” implications.
* The movie reminds us that a run-away worst impact is among first responders who missed the alerts and begin to die as fast as the people they are treating.
* The utility of ice rinks as emergency morgues for hundreds of bodies.
Overall this is a great movie with a fine plot including a worst case break-out of a convicted drug lord, and what happens when people turn off the radio or silence the witness before they can complete a sentence that begins “it's not so simple.”
USG Has Betrayed Us All
