Cultural Intelligence – Page 849 – Public Intelligence Blog

2011/08/022011/08/02

Penguin: TwitterGate – Gingrich Leads Political Corruption in Cyberspace, 92% Fake, Palin, Romney, Bachman, Pawlenty All Fake 70% of Their “Followers”

Civil Society, Corruption, Cultural Intelligence, Government

92 percent of Gingrich’s Twitter followers are fake, search firm says

Newt Gringrich’s campaign denies the allegations, claiming they never used “agencies” to inflate the presidential candidate’s Twitter follower numbers.

GlobalPost, 2 August 2011

A social media analytics site says that 92 percent of Newt Gingrich’s 1.3 million Twitter followers are fake. The New York-based company, PeekYou, used an algorithm to evaluate whether Gringrich’s followers were real individuals, ABC News reports. It found most of Gringrich’s followers were business accounts, private accounts, anonymous accounts with no other web presence or spambots.<

. . . . . . .

PeekYou has also analyzed the Twitter accounts of the other Republican presidential hopefuls, according to Gawker, and has found that Gingrich is not the only GOP politician with a large spambot following. PeekYou claims that only 20 percent of Sarah Palin’s followers, 26 percent of Mitt Romney’s followers, 28 percent of Michele Bachmann’s followers and 32 percent of Tim Pawlenty’s followers are real humans.

Read full story….

Phi Beta Iota: Useful metrics emerge from this–extrapolating and by extention, everything about Gingrich can be presumed to be 92% fake unless proven otherwise, and everything about the other Republicans as 70% fake unless proven otherwise. Cyberspace is very unkind to those who lie for a living.

2011/08/02

Koko: US Government Changes It Story — BearGate

03 Environmental Degradation, 07 Other Atrocities, Corruption, Cultural Intelligence, Government, Journalism/Free-Press/Censorship, Misinformation & Propaganda, Politics of Science & Science of Politics, Power Behind-the-Scenes/Special Interests

29 July Koko: US Government Suspends Scientist For Integrity Inquiry – Who Suspends the USG?

2 August Scientist suspension is about project's management

The government's new new story:

ANCHORAGE, Alaska (AP) — The U.S. government suspended an Arctic biologist over how he awarded a polar bear research project to the University of Alberta and its management, not for his earlier scientific work detailing drowned polar bears, a watchdog group said Monday.

The reality check:

Documents provided by the watchdog group showed questioning by investigators earlier this year focused on the polar bear observations that Monnett and researcher Jeffrey Gleason made in 2004.

Continue reading “Koko: US Government Changes It Story — BearGate”

2011/08/022011/08/02

Chuck Spinney: Libya, Rebels, & the West–A Debacle

04 Inter-State Conflict, 05 Civil War, 07 Other Atrocities, 08 Wild Cards, 10 Security, 11 Society, Articles & Chapters, Corruption, Cultural Intelligence, Government, IO Impotency, Military

Note: the author of this important report is one of best journalists covering the wars of Western intervention in the Islamic world. CS

August 1, 2011

Follow the Oil and the Money

Why the West is Committed to the Murderous Rebels in Libya

By PATRICK COCKBURN, Counterpunch

In keeping with the British Government's well-established record of comical ineptitude in dealing with Libya, foreign secretary William Hague chose to recognize the rebel leaders in Benghazi as the legitimate government of the country at the very moment some of them may have been shooting or torturing to death their chief military commander.

Read full article….

See Also:

Cynthia McKinney Reports from Libya

2011/08/02

Chuck Spinney: Israeli Ethnic Cleansing of the Bedouin

05 Civil War, 06 Genocide, 07 Other Atrocities, 08 Wild Cards, 10 Security, 11 Society, Articles & Chapters, Civil Society, Corruption, Cultural Intelligence, Government, IO Deeds of War, Military

Palestinians fear for ancient West Bank water source

By Tom Perry, Reuters

RASHAYIDA, West Bank | Thu Jul 28, 2011 6:43am EDT

(Reuters) – – Hewn from rock, the cavernous cisterns which dot the desert beyond Bethlehem have for centuries harvested winter rain to provide shepherds and their flocks with water through summer.

Under a baking sun, an elderly Bedouin explains how cisterns he remembers from childhood, many of them restored to full working order in the last few years, are once again helping his goat-herding community to survive.

That, he concludes, is why the Israeli authorities who control the West Bank have demolished at least three in the area since November.

“Maybe they are doing this to make us leave. We will not leave,” said Falah Hedawa, 64, sitting on cushions in his tent home pitched in the hills that slope down to the Dead Sea.

Out into the desert, a stagnant pool marked the spot where one of the cisterns, chiseled out of a hillside, had stood until its recent demolition. A mud trail on the otherwise dry ground indicated where the water inside had drained away toward a wadi, a valley which becomes a river when the rain falls.

Israel has demolished 20 rainwater collection cisterns in the West Bank in the first half of this year, according to the U.N. Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), which monitors conditions in the Palestinian territories.

Read full article…

Phi Beta Iota: There are two crimes against humanity here, the first against the Palestinians, the second against the centuries old cisterns that collect winter water.

The Attack on the Liberty–The Untold Story of Israel’s Deadly 1967 Assault on a U.S. Spy Ship

2011/08/012011/08/01

Richard Wright: Jail Time for Over-Classification?

07 Other Atrocities, 09 Justice, 10 Security, 11 Society, Articles & Chapters, Corruption, Cultural Intelligence, Director of National Intelligence et al (IC), DoD, Government

Is it possible the good guys are going to win the issue of over-classifcation? Can a real Open Source Agency (OSA) become the new face of strateic intelligence?

Complaint Seeks Punishment for Classification of Documents

By SCOTT SHANE

New York Times, August 1, 2011

EXTRACT

Under the executive order governing classification, the punishment could include dismissal, suspension without pay, reprimand or loss of a security clearance.

. . . . . .

“I’ve never seen a more deliberate and willful example of government officials improperly classifying a document,” he said.

Phi Beta Iota: Since the early 1990's the general practice has been to classify everything, and agency heads and the limited number of classifying authorities have been severely derelict in their duty, allowing anyone down to the GS-1 night sweeper to classify documents “in their name.” In this specific instance, the Drake case, it would be quite nice to see someone go to jail. It won't happen, but both the Courts and the public are growing very intolerant of Executive malfeasance that would make Dick Cheney proud. In the purest sense of the world, the US Intelligence Community agency heads are corrupt. They lack integrity.

Reference: 1996 Hill Testimony on Secrecy

Reference: 1996 Testimony to Moynihan Commisson

1993 TESTIMONY on National Security Information

2011/08/01

Winslow Wheeler: Defense Cuts, Defense Flim-Flam

07 Other Atrocities, 10 Security, 11 Society, Blog Wisdom, Budgets & Funding, Civil Society, Corruption, Cultural Intelligence, DoD, Government, IO Impotency, Military, Misinformation & Propaganda, Officers Call, Open Government, Peace Intelligence, Politics of Science & Science of Politics, Power Behind-the-Scenes/Special Interests, Secrecy & Politics of Secrecy, Strategy, Technologies

WinslowWheeler Cropped — Winslow Wheeler

There are numerous misleading and misinformed assertions being made about the defense spending parts of the debt deal.

The White House's “fact sheet” asserts a $350 billion savings in the “base defense budget.” The $350 billion in defense savings that the White House declares apparently uses a different “baseline” (basis of comparison) and pretends that a two year cap the bill establishes on “security” spending will extend to ten years. Most misleading of all, it assumes that all savings in the “security” category (which includes DOD, DOE/nuclear weapons, all State Department related spending, Veterans Affairs, and Homeland Security) will occur only in DOD spending. In fact, the “security” category was designed to broaden the base for “defense” cuts and to lessen the impact on DOD. The undocumented $350 billion in “security” savings will actually translate into lesser reductions in DOD spending, but the amount is unknown. The actual amount will be decided by Congress in the future.

2011/08/012011/08/01

John Robb: US DoD Cuts Around $200 Billion a Year

03 Economy, 10 Security, 11 Society, Corruption, Cultural Intelligence, IO Deeds of Peace

Sunday, 31 July 2011

JOURNAL: Rumored US DoD Cuts

Here's what is circulating (assuming this budget impasse can be resolved, it gets more severe if it isn't):

DoD to cut $800 billion over 4 years. $200 billion a year out of a $600 b budget.
3 government employees must retire/leave before any new hire is made.

About 3 years ago when I was a speaker at the Highlands Conference (they run a private conference for the Secretary of Defense), I was asked what the biggest unexpected challenge facing the US defense department was. My answer: The DoD will only have half the budget it has today in five years. The trick is going to be: how to get down to that number in an orderly way.

Phi Beta Iota: These are long overdue cuts and barely scratch the surface. Between out of control research, overseas bases, out of control contractors, and the Navy/Air Force obsession with big complex systems that are of little use 90% of the time, there is much more work to be done. It must be driven by intelligene with integrity. That is not something that is now available within the US Government. It is also time to end the early retirement of military employees that have not seen combat, and to end double-dipping by retirees who sign on with contractors. One paycheck per person should be the standard. Anyone working after retirement gets up to 80% of their retirement check suspended with thanks from a grateful public.

Dr. Russell Ackoff on IC and DoD + Design RECAP

Reference: No More Secrets – Open Source Intelligence/Intelligence Reform Fight Round II