Collaboration Zones – Page 1460 – Public Intelligence Blog

Military Impostors Are Neither Few Nor Proud

Mary Schantag, co-founder and researcher for the POW Network, said her group's Web site lists 3,500 “phonies and wannabes” who claim to be former prisoners of war, medal recipients, members of elite forces or heroic combat veterans. She said she receives new allegations daily.

“This is an epidemic,” said Schantag, who is based in Skidmore, Mo. “It's almost a mass identity theft of people who earned their status as heroes.”

. . . . . . .

“It pretty much boils down to ego, women or money,” Schantag said.

Many impostors get away with their claims for years because the military does not keep a list of most medal recipients. Sterner, who pushed for adoption of the Stolen Valor Act, is now campaigning for legislation that would require the Pentagon to maintain a list of all the men and women it has honored.

“How many people do you see out there claiming they won an Academy Award and didn't?” he asked. “None, since there is a list of Academy Award recipients. How many phonies are claiming Silver Stars? They are all over the country because there is no list of Silver Star recipients.”

Sterner has compiled his own list of more than 26,000 medal winners and posted it on the Hall of Valor Web site, sponsored by the Military Times. Members of the public can search the database to verify the names of true medal winners. Earlier this month, AMVETS launched ReportStolenValor.org, where people can report suspected impostors.

Phi Beta Iota: Marcus Aureleus flagged this one, and we'd like to add to it the dismal lack of coverage of our suicides and amputees, two sides of the four-sided human cost of war that is almost deliberately concealed. See those stories below.

Continue reading “Journal: Stolen Valor & Ignored Suicides & Amputees”

2009/12/142009/12/15

Journal: Weak Signals–Death of Osama Bin Laden & 9/11

Collective Intelligence

Veterans Raise Questions

Special Report:

YEARS OF DECEIT: US OPENLY ACCEPTS BIN LADEN LONG DEAD

BIN LADEN NEVER MENTIONED IN McCHRYSTAL REPORT OR OBAMA SPEECH

“HUNT FOR BIN LADEN” A NATIONAL SHAME

By Gordon Duff/STAFF WRITER/Senior Editor

Conservative commentator, former Marine Colonel Bob Pappas has been saying for years that bin Laden died at Tora Bora and that Senator Kerry's claim that bin Laden escaped with Bush help was a lie. Now we know that Pappas was correct. The embarassment of having Secretary of State Clinton talk about bin Laden in Pakistan was horrific. He has been dead since December 13, 2001 and now, finally, everyone, Obama, McChrystal, Cheney, everyone who isn't nuts is finally saying what they have known for years.

See also:

Review: Osama Bin Laden–Dead or Alive?

Continue reading “Journal: Weak Signals–Death of Osama Bin Laden & 9/11”

2009/12/142009/12/14

Journal: Four-Dimensional Digital Maps

Analysis, Budgets & Funding, Collaboration Zones, Communities of Practice, Ethics, Geospatial, Key Players, Methods & Process, Mobile, Policies, Real Time, Threats

The graphic can be enlarged. Two key points:

1. We are finally getting to where geospatial and functional data can be merged in near-real-time.

2. Intelligence Online remains our only “must read”

The question that is NOT being addressed is this one: What will it take to create an infinitely scalable and drillable digital map of the Earth, using open source software and open to all, to which all manner of data in all languages can be appended, validated, and integrated?

2009/12/142009/12/14

Journal: ClimateGate 14 Dec 09 Morning

Earth Intelligence

Developing countries boycott UN climate talks

COPENHAGEN – China, India and other developing nations boycotted U.N. climate talks Monday, bringing negotiations to a halt with their demand that rich countries discuss much deeper cuts in their greenhouse gas emissions.

“We are seeing the death of the Kyoto Protocol,” said Djemouai Kamel of Algeria, the head of the 50-nation Africa group.

It was the second time the Africans have disrupted the climate talks. At the last round of negotiations in November, the African bloc forced a one-day suspension until wealthy countries agreed to spell out what steps they will take to reduce emissions.

Climategate: Who are the ‘deniers' now?

A couple of years ago, supporters of global warming theory began referring to skeptics as “deniers” — implying that anyone who doubted climate change should be lumped with Holocaust deniers.

Now the shoe is on the other foot, thanks to the eye-popping e-mail dump that hit the Internet recently and quickly became known as “Climategate.” The response of much of the global-warming “community” has been … denial.

ClimateGate

ClimateGate Research Unit Disables Its Website

The Climatic Research Unit at the heart of the ClimateGate scandal has taken down most of the information previously available at its website.

Letter: ‘Climategate' gets short shrift in news columns

Does the Amarillo Globe-News sleepwalk through current events? On Dec. 4, you published an article titled, “Climate experts: Adapt or Die,” which read, “With the world losing the battle against global warming so far, experts are warning that humans need to follow nature's example: Adapt or die … One difficulty is that climate change is happening rapidly.”

On Nov. 28, Daily Telegraph journalist Christopher Booker opined on global warming, “Our hopelessly compromised scientific establishment cannot be allowed to get away with a whitewash of what has become the greatest scientific scandal of our age (Climategate).”

Climategate has revealed widespread global-warming fraud.

2009/12/142009/12/14

Journal: Pakistan-Afghanistan War

04 Inter-State Conflict, 05 Civil War, 05 Energy, 07 Other Atrocities, 08 Wild Cards, 09 Terrorism, 10 Security, Government, Military, Peace Intelligence, Strategy

Phi Beta Iota: Zbigniew Brzezinski is doing an enormous amount of damage in his hidden counsel to the White House; if John Hamre replaces Bob Gates in January as has been discussed, this will get worse, not better. Below are a few odds and ends from various contributing editors, consolidated here to avoid beating a dead horse with too many postings. We have not sought to reconcile contradictory points of view, only to honor the importance of listening to diverse points of view. The London Telegraph piece is reproduced in full as it has disappeared from online view.

Chuck Spinney Sends on Religious Fundamentalism and the Rise of the Corporate State on What Is Living and What Is Dead in Social Democracy? on Soldiers’ Complaints of Shoddy Gear Spur Inquiry by House Democrats

Webster Tarpley Sends on Obama's War Against Pakistan on End the War Rally Videos on No Wind of Change After Obama's Nobel Peace Prize

Obama’s West Point speech of December 1 represents far more than the obvious brutal escalation in Afghanistan — it is nothing less than a declaration of all-out war by the United States against Pakistan.

Victor Davis Hansen on Obama’s Wheel of Fortune: The president’s luck has changed — and he doesn’t seem to have noticed

Marcus Aurelius Sends: Special Forces Unite To Destroy Taliban Leaders London Sunday Telegraph December 13, 2009 Pg. 2 By Sean Rayment, Defence Correspondent

British and US special forces are set to open a new front in southern Afghanistan in a bid to “break the back” of the Taliban insurgency.

Continue reading “Journal: Pakistan-Afghanistan War”

2009/12/142011/10/22

Journal: Weak Signals–Civil War in the USA?

08 Wild Cards, Civil Society, Collective Intelligence, Ethics, Government, Law Enforcement

Missouri Billboard Warns: “Prepare For War” Against Government (12 December 2009)

A new billboard off of Interstate 70 in Missouri provides a short “citizens guide to REVOLUTION of a corrupt government” and issues a call to “PREPARE FOR WAR.”

This billboard replaces one that warned that the socialist “Obama-Nation” is “coming for you.” It’s unclear who the owner of the billboard is, but the first one was the work of a “Missouri businessman.”

While it’s unclear who owns it, the Lafayette County Republican Central Committee seems to endorse it.

U.S. Forces Plan Direct Action Against American Citizens (11 December 2009)

“There is an event coming in the very near-term future that is going to effect the USA to its very soul,” former Kansas State Trooper Greg Everson of The Heartland USA and former host of Republic Broadcasting “Voices from the Heartland” told host Steve Quayle in a special two hour “Survive 2 Thrive” broadcast Thursday.

Continue reading “Journal: Weak Signals–Civil War in the USA?”

2009/12/142009/12/14

Worth a Look: Contractors in Stability Operations

10 Security, 10 Transnational Crime, Commerce, Commercial Intelligence, Worth A Look

Stability Operations for Dummies: The Role of the Prvate Sector in Iraq (YouTube Briefing)

Doug Brooks, founding President of the International Peace Operations Association (IPOA) has a video circulating that offers the soft sales pitch for outsourcing “contingency support.” It is all positive and completely avoids all of the negatives, such as:

1. Pillaging and disrupting existing intelligence and special operations ranks by incentivizing early retirement.

2. Cost 3x to 10X that of a uniformed or civil service source.

3. Profit motive rather than mission motive.

4. Pretends contractor mistakes are not politically accountable.

5. Pretends contractors actually favor low-cost locals (which radically reduces overhead profits)

Continue reading “Worth a Look: Contractors in Stability Operations”