Allen Roland: Honoring Chalmers Johnson, Prophet of Truth + Empire Meta-RECAP

07 Other Atrocities, 10 Transnational Crime, Commerce, Corruption, Cultural Intelligence, Government, History, IO Deeds of War, Law Enforcement, Lessons, Media, Military, Misinformation & Propaganda, Money, Banks & Concentrated Wealth, Officers Call, Peace Intelligence, Power Behind-the-Scenes/Special Interests, Secrecy & Politics of Secrecy, True Cost, Waste (materials, food, etc)
Allen Roland, Ph.D.
Allen Roland, Ph.D.

Prophet for a Dying Empire

Every dying Empire has its truth telling prophet and America had its own with Chalmers Johnson. Johnson correctly compared the decay of the American empire, with its well over 600 overseas military bases, with the fall of the Roman Empire whereas the Senate becomes a wealthy corporate club and irrelevant compared to the ruling Military Industrial Congressional Complex

by Allen L Roland

Chalmers Johnson was a truth teller and prophet in a political environment where few would stand up to the interests and secrecy of the Pentagon and the intelligence community ~ and since his passing in November of 2010, many of his prophetic fears have been realized in the Obama administration.

Johnson, author of Blowback, Sorrows of Empire and Nemesis,The Last Days of the American Republic, talks in this video interview about the similarities in the decline of the Roman and Soviet empires and the signs that the U.S. empire is exhibiting the very same symptoms ~ overextension, corruption and the inability to reform. (Watch at least the first 20 minutes and also the very end where he predicts an economic collapse)

Johnson’ s main points were; The United States is treading the same three steps as the former Soviet Union;

  • Inability to deal with corporate corruption.
  • Imperial over-stretch is leading to fiscal insolvency ( 600 plus bases throughout the world )
  • Inability to reform, thus accelerating the inevitable fall.

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Robert Steele: Intelligent Management of Intelligence Agencies, and the New Craft of Intelligence

Analysis, Budgets & Funding, Collaboration Zones, Collective Intelligence, Communities of Practice, Computer/online security, Counter-Oppression/Counter-Dictatorship Practices, Ethics, Geospatial, Hacking, History, Information Operations (IO), Intelligence (government), Key Players, Methods & Process, Officers Call, Open Government, Policies, Real Time, Reform, Resilience, Serious Games, Strategy, Technologies, Threats, Waste (materials, food, etc), Whole Earth Review
Robert David STEELE Vivas

I have begun drafting my portion of the new Handbook of Intelligence Studies (Routledge, 2013), it is a chapter early on entitled “The Craft of Intelligence.”  I pick up where Allen Dulles and Sherman Kent left off.  My graphic on Intelligence Maturity captures the essence of my thinking at the strategic level, but of course there is more to come, including the desperate need to restore integrity to all that we do.

In 1988 I ghost-wrote for the Commandant of  the Marine Corps an article that he enhanced and signed, “Global Intelligence Challenges in the 1990's.”  At that time my focus was on the difference between the conventional threat and the emerging unconventional threat.

Now my focus is on the purpose and process of intelligence as decision-support.  We must — we will — move from secret intelligence for the few to open intelligence for the many; from expensive centralized largely worthless intelligence to free and low-cost distributed intelligence relevant to every person at every level on every issue; from intelligence as window-dressing for channeling $80 billion a year to banks and corporations, to intelligence as an integral element of every aspect of a Smart Nation.

Today Owl sent me a link to an article, Philip E. Tetlock and Barabara A Mellers, “Intelligent Management of Intelligence Agencies,” American Psychologist, 2011, pp. 1-12.  I  respect Owl, so I printed it and read it twice.

This article is completely out of touch with reality and the authors have not bothered to familiarize themselves with the literatures pertinent to their endeavor.  Out of 89 cited sources 12 are non-intelligence-related prior publications of the lead author, 1 is a prior publication of the second author, and 11 are ostensibly about intelligence but truly marginal selections.  So 12% sources on the subject, 13% self-citation, and 75% escoteric psycho-babble irrelevant to the actual challenge.  As an intelligence professional, I am offended that two ostensibly erudite individuals would dare to publish this trype without even a semblance of understanding of the subject under discussion.

See Also:

Robert Steele: The Craft of Intelligence – OLD vs. NEW

Here are a few comments and additional links:

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Reference: Global Risks 2012 [World Economic Forum]

Commerce, Corruption, Government, IO Impotency, Money, Banks & Concentrated Wealth, Policies, Power Behind-the-Scenes/Special Interests, Secrecy & Politics of Secrecy, Threats, True Cost, Waste (materials, food, etc), World Economic Forum

Economic imbalances and social inequality risk reversing the gains of globalization, warns the World Economic Forum in its report Global Risks 2012. These are the findings of a survey of 469 experts and industry leaders who worry that the world’s institutions are ill-equipped to cope with today’s interconnected, rapidly evolving risks. The findings of the survey fed into an analysis of three major risk cases: Seeds of Dystopia; Unsafe Safeguards and the Dark Side of Connectivity. Report also analyses the top 10 risks in five categories – economic, environmental, geopolitical, societal and technological.

Report

Tip of the Hat to Berto Jongman.

Phi Beta Iota:  The report fails to address the absence of both intelligence and integrity among all “institutions” be they public or private.  This is the entire point of the global Occupy movement.  This is also the entire point of this website, which predates Occupy by some time.

Josh Kilbourn: Endgame – 2012 Forecast [W.E. Pollock]

01 Agriculture, 03 Economy, 07 Health, 09 Justice, 10 Security, 11 Society, 12 Water, Analysis, Budgets & Funding, Civil Society, Commerce, Corporations, Corruption, Cultural Intelligence, General Accountability Office, Government, IO Deeds of War, Money, Banks & Concentrated Wealth, Office of Management and Budget, Power Behind-the-Scenes/Special Interests, Threats, Waste (materials, food, etc)

We are going to move from denial to realization.  Physical world events will drive the process of realization. The primary trend is between stability and instability. We are moving from a multi-class system running from Super Elite to Unperson into a model of have's and have-nots, the unpersons. Labor has become a problem because less than 500 million are involved in life support activities thereby leaving more than 7 billion people very vulnerable to dependency (and treated as expendable containers). We are watching a redistribution process bound towards divestiture as more people become unpersons. Destruction of paper assets, debt collapse, bank failure, and war are all part of the redistribution process. With more unpeople, it becomes easier to reduce population through death and abuse. Our current economic structure has at least six trajectories of support; the physical world, human capital, transportation, technology, rule of law,and money.

Fukishima, Katrina, Gulf of Mexico oil spill — all examples of entire populations treated as “unpersons.”

See Also:

VIDEO: Fukushima – Total Cost (33)

W. E. Pollock Web Site

Chuck Spinney: UXO Waste of War Decades Later

04 Inter-State Conflict, 07 Other Atrocities, 11 Society, Blog Wisdom, Military, Waste (materials, food, etc)
Chuck Spinney

For every square meter of land along the Western front from the Channel coast to the Swiss border it is estimated that a ton of explosives fell during WW1 (the “Iron Harvest“)

Belgian UXO (unexploded ordnance) experts estimate there are 450 million pieces of UXO in Belgium alone. At Verdun in France the estimate is that 12 million pieces of UXO remain.

Belgium – 450 million pieces

Verdun 12 million pieces

Verdun II

Belgian EOD

French UXB info

630 French UXO personnel have been killed since WWII working on this stuff. Currently in France the UXO specialists recover about 900 tons per year, with 30 tons of that being chemical munitions (mustard gas shells, phosgene shells, etc.), and they estimate there's enough work there to keep them busy for another 900 years.

French UXO specialist deaths

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Richard Wright: More on CIA’s Continuing Implosion

07 Other Atrocities, 10 Security, Articles & Chapters, Blog Wisdom, Corruption, Government, Methods & Process, Movies, Waste (materials, food, etc)
Richard Wright

26 November 2011

Robert,

Not surprisingly your feelings about CIA [Robert Steele: Iran Arrests Twelve CIA Agents] have been echoed by Bob Baer whose principal area of operations was the Levant. As in this ABC interview: Former CIA Agent: U.S. Has Lost Its Spy Mojo  [includes short video]

“But former senior CIA officer Robert Baer told ABC News this week that the loss of assets was more than a mere setback, and not an isolated incident but part of a disturbing pattern.

“When you lose your entire station, either in Tehran or Beirut, that's a catastrophe,” said Bob Baer, a legendary CIA agent whose Middle East exploits were fictionalized in the George Clooney film “Syriana.” Baer said the disaster was due in part to a new generation of agents that has forgotten, or never learned, the traditional methods of intelligence gathering.

  “They don't understand tradecraft,” Baer said. “And we have lost our touch in espionage.”” (Emphasis mine)

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Marcus Aurelius: SecDef to McCain on Sequester + RECAP on DoD Fraud, Waste, & Abuse

04 Inter-State Conflict, 07 Other Atrocities, 09 Justice, 10 Security, 11 Society, Analysis, Budgets & Funding, Collaboration Zones, Commerce, Corporations, Corruption, Director of National Intelligence et al (IC), DoD, Government, Hill Letters & Testimony, IO Impotency, Military, Office of Management and Budget, Officers Call, Power Behind-the-Scenes/Special Interests, Secrecy & Politics of Secrecy, True Cost, Waste (materials, food, etc)
Marcus Aurelius

Invite your attention to pages 5 thru 7 of attached which outlines in very clear terms the likely FY 2013 and longer term impacts on the Department of Defense and the Joint Force of the impending sequester brought about by this week's dereliction of duty on the part of the Senators and Representatives making up the Joint Select Committee on Deficit Reduction.

SecDef Panetta to Senator McCain on Sequester (PDF 2 pages)

Phi Beta Iota:  Panetta-McCain may be the toxic replacment to Cheney-Warner.  The letter is without merit.   The acquisition system is so broken now the Navy and Army cannot build anything coherently–the Navy still lacks Naval Gun Fire and the Army still lacks an infantry weapon able to out-gun  the Taliban, while the Air Force continues to stink at close air support and lack both an intra-theater adequacy of lift and a long-haul heavy lift capability (or the ability to be effective above 6,000 ft).  DoD, in short, is a mis-managed mess and Panetta has no idea how to go about fixing that, nor does he want to.  Lockheed Martin and others are quite happy with the way things are, where 50% of every dollar is waste but that waste is profit for them because it includes their overhead.  It is true that the current laws mandated by Congress make it difficult for any Cabinet Secretary to cut waste–this is the same Congress that mandated we pay 100% asking price for Medicare drugs instead of the more common global standard of 2% for generic wholesale.  As long as Congress remains corrupt, and the SecDef remains corrupt, there is no fixing this problem.  The FACT is that we have to cut one trillion a year (what we are borrowing), not one trillion over ten years.  The FACT is that DoD would be much stronger if it could combine both intelligence and integrity and actually create the four forces after next, at a much reduced cost, that those with intelligence and integrity have been discussing for decades, and with greater intensity, since the mid-1990's.

See Also:

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