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Friday, June 25, 2004

On Human Intelligence

The internet changed the world of national security and it changed the intelligence community and the independent research centers which serve both. First of all, a piece like this blog entry would have no place outside of a report -- or a memorandum to a group (or specific individual) to get them up to speed. Similar to what is done during the daily intelligence briefing to the President and other key Administration officials. Unlike a book which goes through several editors before it reaches the eyes of the reader, a blog reaches a much smaller audience, but can come through with its content intact.

In the good old days a national security meeting would be held in facilities resembling bank vaults. Literally some facilities exist in which each door has a combination lock and which is closed from the inside, so that it is simply not able to be accessed from the outside when in use. These facilities were built to resist any sort of eaves dropping, jam all transmitting devices and now they have specialized fields which distort the signals received and recorded by digital cameras and camcorders.

Now in the internet age, the group video teleconference is all the rage, the conference call and the e-mail message. As a result national security and the ability to lockdown classified information has suffered dramatically. It’s simply much harder to keep a secret these days -- in the United States.

In the Middle East, and in areas where technology has had minimal development, the old fashioned methods of intelligence transfer prevail. These include face to face transfer of data, hard document deliveries and comparable electronics-free data delivery. This is what made Al Qaeda such a difficult group to track. It is what makes the insurgents in Iraq equally difficult. Our modern world has phased out the gumshoe private investigator for a cell phone tap and a keyboard input recorder. We monitor the bad guys and drug dealers using their cell phones and IP addresses. Our intelligence gathering has a distinct disadvantage because of this disparate development between the United States and the rest of the world -- especially the 3rd world. We rely on state-of-the-art satellite imagery, thermal imaging and GPS software. These are all useless in tracking an enemy who doesn’t use communications technology.

So the internet has been nothing but trouble for the world from a security standpoint. The billions of e-mails can transfer all sorts of national secrets from one point to another on the globe without the need of a spy or secret agent to acquire them. One disloyal citizen can do untold damage to national security. In corporations which conduct research or in the universities, one single e-mail message can betray a new concept, a marketing plan or help a competitor to get to market first.

We need more feet on the ground. We must rely less on technology and more on human intelligence (HUMINT) -- at least until our enemies are equally addicted to technology.


The "New" left in America

Time for another history lesson. The folks at moveon.org and countless other leftist organizations, which present their views as new and timely perspective for the 21st century, really are peddling the same old Vietnam era psychobabble. It has its origins in work done by The Center for the Study of Democratic Institutions. ( hereafter CFSDI )

CFSDI came up with an agenda back in 1967. (They also loved to rewrite the Constitution regularly) Here it is in a nutshell. Please stop for a moment and take the time to really examine these points. Do you notice any similarities with the leftist movement of 2004?


1. The United Nations must be strengthened and made more independent.
2. Membership in the United Nations must be made universal.
3. The war in Vietnam is at best a mistake.
4. Southeast Asia must be neutralized.
5. The Cold War must be ended.
6. Racial discrimination is intolerable.
7. The developing nations must be assisted and aid to them be multilateral.
8. The terms of trade are intolerable for the developing countries; the ratio of industrial prices to those of primary products must receive the most earnest, explicit and immediate attention.
9. No military solutions are adequate for the present day.
10. No national solutions are adequate for the present day.
11. Coexistence is a necessary but not sufficient condition of human life. Survival is not an ignoble aim but it is not a noble one either. We must move upward from coexistence to what Pope John called the universal common good. This is an aim worthy of humanity. It will require the organization of the world for continuous peaceful change and the revision of the status quo without war.


Exchange Vietnam for Iraq and Southeast Asia for the Middle East and you have a point for point match of the current agenda being touted as the panacea for the world's ills. Some of it sounds attractive, even quite rational, but the folks at CFSDI, whose political philosophy could best be summed up as global communism, failed to look closely enough at their first two points.

Here's what's wrong. The United Nations is a group composed of the individual nations of the world. Many of those nations have reprehensible governments. A child might think that he could make the ultimate drink by mixing his favorite drinks: coke, milk, fruit punch, Gatorade,7-up, Dr. Pepper, Lemonade and lastly Koolaid. He proceeds to mix the ingredients and gulps down the concoction without thinking. When he finds himself in intestinal distress and poised over a toilet bowl, only then does he learn his lesson. The UN is a noble idea manifested using idiocy. It is corrupt to the very rafters. It is impotent to provide any real security to the peoples of the world and is, sadly, no more than the sum of its parts -- which should be enough to damn it to oblivion..

If you have a group of kids in a room in ages from 5 to 18 and you ask them an addition problem, do you take their answers and average them to create a collective group answer? This distorted method of problem solving would only lead to the wrong answers almost every single time you asked a question. For over fifty years the UN has provided the world with the wrong answers. The UN presumes an equality of governments which does not exist.

This leads us to point 10 which declares national solutions inadequate. This is the dream leftist agenda, where nations hand over the reins of power to the UN and the world body in some grand motion brings peace and prosperity to all, destroy SUVS, make those with inferiority complexes hopeful that all those with more will be taken down so they can spit in their eye. To be quite blunt the UN vision is just masqueraded communism - nothing more. The laurels and the world on the UN flag might as well be the hammer and sickle. Such an event if it did transpire would bring far more suffering than did the Bolsheviks, Stalin or Mao. It would eventually establish global poverty and forced equality (except for the few UN masters). It would bring down lifespans for the most advanced nations and pull them up for the most backwards, returning to a 50 year life expectancy in short order as the global resources get reallocated by those anointed ones.

Limited perspectives and escape mechanisms. That is what brings such utopian visions to the mind's eye of the leftists and one-worlders. It is really just a childish response of someone harboring a substantial persecution complex. As if to prove that such an assessment is accurate, the CSFDI Senior Fellow, Robert Hutchins, once had declared that CSFDI was "like an island of sanity in a McCarthyite world."

Hutchins was wrong of course, just as the "new" left is wrong now.

Sunday, June 20, 2004

Please do not ignore the people behind the curtains...

My job is to know things. Lots of things. There are a lot of groups that are completely off the radar of the average American, but which play important roles in public policy.

Think tanks date back to WWII and were the military-based descendants of the 'brain trusts' used by Presidents to advise on policy matters. Most folks have heard of The RAND corporation, which started life in 1948 as a corporation with a 3 million dollar a year budget, but there are many more think tanks today and they have a rich history which anyone, who wants to peek behind the curtain of the world's power brokers, should start to become aware.

In 1951 The Army created the Human Resources Research Office (HUMRRO). They were involved in psychological warfare. In those days they called it "psychotechnology" and it covered issues of troop morale, motivation and psychological warfare. They became a private, nonprofit corporation back in 1969 and are based out of Alexandria, Virginia. HUMRRO still exists today (awful acronym and all), some 53 years later, and judging by their website you'd never guess they were one of the nation's premiere military research groups, filled to the brim and overflowing with psychologists. They have had some fascinating projects over the decades. From studying what causes a soldier to go AWOL or studying the use of music to influence the mind in communist propaganda (amusingly named project TREBLE), HUMRRO has had a long run and was largely responsible for implementing many different training methods and military practices of which many are still in use now.

People are sheep. This is not intended as an insult, but rather is an astute assessment of the predictable, and pliable human mind. In the 1940's they already discovered that a red and yellow color contrast attracts the human eye faster than any other dual color wave length combination. Corporations which marketed to consumers bought this knowledge and early on applied it to signs and billboards. How many fast food signs and logos still use this human trait to attract customers?










A good number learned this human attribute and use it liberally. They expect you to follow blindly and go with the flow of the masses.

The next time you see a red and yellow sign, which you are almost guaranteed to do before the day is over, please do me a favor and remember this blog entry. You will now be aware of the some of these things which go on behind the curtains and which are used to control your mind and decision making process.

How many companies like HUMRRO are in the business of "human quality control" or "human engineering?" More than anyone really knows. In fact, as I write this, new and old think tanks are writing the President advisory memos, postulating the US responses to a Shiite theocracy takeover in Iraq, counting the casualties of an atomic strike on North Korea and inventing new weapons and technologies the like of which you can't even begin to comprehend. One study is currently working on quantum thought identification, another how humanity would survive an output increase of radiation from the sun. The work behind the curtain is occurring at a frenzied pace and has for over half a century. While some of it is detrimental to society, other efforts have saved countless lives and made for a better world.

On this blog - I will try to throw up the curtain from time to time so you can get a better perspective of the world in which you live. Ignoring the folks behind the curtain may lead you to the shearer.

Saturday, June 19, 2004

Manifest Destiny Revisited

Manifest Destiny has been thoroughly discarded and discredited by the elitist educational institutions and those who teach US history in the 21st century. It is a throwback term from the mid 19th century which required two now politically incorrect intangibles, national pride and a belief in destiny. The phrase has been attached to the racist policies of the time period which saw native Americans and the fresh minted Mexican state as secondary to the destiny and will of the American (euro-caucasoid) peoples.

When the US went into Afghanistan and later into Iraq, the charged phrase was again leveled at the Bush administration and particularly at Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and Vice-President Dick Cheney who were members of The Project For a New American Century which was formed during the failed policies of the Clinton Administration. If we look at the mission statement we come to the four core principles of the organization's beliefs:

• we need to increase defense spending significantly if we are to carry out our global responsibilities today and modernize our armed forces for the future;


• we need to strengthen our ties to democratic allies and to challenge regimes hostile to our interests and values;


• we need to promote the cause of political and economic freedom abroad;


• we need to accept responsibility for America's unique role in preserving and extending an international order friendly to our security, our prosperity, and our principles.


It seems fairly obvious that these principles are sound and hardly racist at all. Indeed the second bulleted point encourages political and economic freedom for other peoples, not just Americans. How is it that the left in America can twist true freedom into oppression and teach a freedom which truly is oppression in disguise? These questions are answered when we look at the agendas that pretend to be in the interests of others but which really are concealed manifestations of sustaining power for the few.

Communism and socialism, for example, despite loud protestations to the contrary, are flawed philosophies which enforce false equality in an attempt to equalize the masses only to really empower a few - the few who are behind such a political or economic drive and have positioned themselves to benefit from it.

The left screams about the oppression of the masses in Iraq. US presence is tantamount to oppression. Never mind that it is the US forces that has displaced a regime of terror that took reigns of power with grim massacres in 1979 or that US forces are what keep the nation from a bloody civil war between Sunnis and Shiites or Kurds and Sunnis. US presence in Iraq is supposedly another sign of the revived Cheney/Rumsfeld/Wolfowitz Manifest Destiny agenda. Muslims, in this leftist interpretation of US foreign policy have replaced Mexicans and native Americans as the inferior masses to be eliminated.

These are the sorts of obstacles the US faces as it tries to bring political and economic freedom to Muslims and Iraqis. When seen in perspective one realizes these folks in other nations who decry George Bush's foreign policy are actively attempting to thwart this effort for their own personal and national gain.

The US does have a Manifest Destiny. It's destiny was determined when the Declaration of Independence was signed:

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. --That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, --That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.



Note that it does not just say "Americans are created equal" but "all men". Indeed the Declaration of Independence could be seen as a road map for US nation building with the consent of the oppressed peoples in nations around the world. Saddam's government like many others certainly existed in violation of our founding fathers deepest held beliefs. In my view, when the Kurds came to the US with a delegation, representing hundreds of thousands of Kurds, to ask for the overthrow of Saddam's regime for inhumanities to their people, it almost immediately brought legitimacy to the US effort to remove him from power. Our Declaration of Independence, our most sacred document declares that all men have the unalienable right to Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.

Our efforts in the cold war were clearly following this destiny our nation's founders set into motion. We always stand for liberty and we always will. When it is in our power to bring freedom to people on earth - we will do it. That's the real Manifest Destiny of the United States and it is a very good destiny. It's about time others understand it and the left globally should not be allowed to distort the US foreign policy to serve their own agendas.

Decisions. Decisions. Decisions.

I've decided to use this blog to discuss policy and some issues that merit inclusion. As a result some may find this a bit drier than the other blog and it is perhaps catering to a different audience. Work and play take one step closer together. This blog promises to be quite educational and a valuable forum.

A Shining City upon a Hill




I've walked through the streets of Reagan's city and it is a beautiful, clean and inspiring place. The innate goodness of the residents has eliminated all crime and the children playing can be heard in the parks which adds a youthful feel to the place.

The architecture is timeless. At one time its residents preferred early American but that phase passed and now it's a collection of the best from all over the world. Unemployment is down to zero percent and their productivity is off the chart.

The city stands as a testament to the will of the American ideal and spirit and it views all the world below it. I have a home in this city and am a citizen of it. I have dedicated my life to seeing that the values it holds, and the freedom and love that exists therein, is shared with all mankind so that they, too, will one day be able to walk the streets, hear the children and watch the gorgeous sunrise every morning on purple mountains and golden grain and the magenta sunsets on white tipped breakers gently caressing the sand.

Reagan in his farewell address described it well and I shall leave you with his words:

"And that's about all I have to say tonight, except for one thing. The past few days when I've been at that window upstairs, I've thought a bit of the `shining city upon a hill.' The phrase comes from John Winthrop, who wrote it to describe the America he imagined. What he imagined was important because he was an early Pilgrim, an early freedom man. He journeyed here on what today we'd call a little wooden boat; and like the other Pilgrims, he was looking for a home that would be free. I've spoken of the shining city all my political life, but I don't know if I ever quite communicated what I saw when I said it. But in my mind it was a tall, proud city built on rocks stronger than oceans, windswept, God-blessed, and teeming with people of all kinds living in harmony and peace; a city with free ports that hummed with commerce and creativity. And if there had to be city walls, the walls had doors and the doors were open to anyone with the will and the heart to get here. That's how I saw it, and see it still.

And how stands the city on this winter night? More prosperous, more secure, and happier than it was 8 years ago. But more than that: After 200 years, two centuries, she still stands strong and true on the granite ridge, and her glow has held steady no matter what storm. And she's still a beacon, still a magnet for all who must have freedom, for all the pilgrims from all the lost places who are hurtling through the darkness, toward home.

We've done our part. And as I walk off into the city streets, a final word to the men and women of the Reagan revolution, the men and women across America who for 8 years did the work that brought America back. My friends: We did it. We weren't just marking time. We made a difference. We made the city stronger, we made the city freer, and we left her in good hands. All in all, not bad, not bad at all.

And so, goodbye, God bless you, and God bless the United States of America."