Government – Page 614 – Public Intelligence Blog

Huh?

Mark Zuckerberg and Other Tech Giants Form Political Advocacy Group

Mark Zuckerberg is on a mission to reform U.S. immigration policy. The Facebook co-founder has announced the official launch of FWD.us, a political advocacy group that aims to foster technology innovation and entrepreneurialism. News of the group was first reported late last month by the San Francisco Chronicle.

In an opinion piece today in the Washington Post, Zuckerberg recalled a young student he was mentoring as part of an entrepreneurship program who said he probably won't be able to attend college because his family moved to the U.S. from Mexico, and he is undocumented. “We have a strange immigration policy for a nation of immigrants,” Zuckerberg wrote. “And it's a policy unfit for today's world.”

Founding FWD.us with Zuckerberg are LinkedIn co-founder Reid Hoffman, Google Executive Chairman Eric Schmidt and Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer, among several other tech leaders. The group says it plans to work with Congressional leaders, the Obama administration and state and local officials to support policy changes.

Zuckerberg outlined three of the group's objectives:Comprehensive immigration reform that begins with effective border security, provides a path to citizenship and helps the U.S. attract skilled workers, no matter where they were born.Higher standards and accountability in public schools, support for good teachers and a greater focus on teaching science, technology, engineering and math.Investment in breakthrough discoveries in scientific research and assurance that the benefits of the inventions belong to the public.

John Steiner: Corporate Personhood Denied in Pennsylvania — States Begin to Reject Supreme Court Corruption — Possible Litmus Test for 2014 Congressional Elections

Civil Society, Commerce, Ethics, Government, Law Enforcement

Do click on below to read the full, encouraging ad inspiring report…relevant for fracking, shale gas, factory farming, sludge dumping, large scale water withdrawals and industrial scale energy projects.

Dear Friends,

Last week, a Pennsylvania county court declared that corporations are not ³persons² under the Pennsylvania Constitution, and therefore, that corporations cannot elevate their ³private rights² above the rights of people. In a landmark ruling, President Judge Debbie O¹Dell-Seneca of the Washington County Court of Common Pleas denied the corporation¹s request on the basis that the Pennsylvania Constitution only protects the rights of people, not business entities. This same decision must be made in thousands of other courts across our country to lay the fallacy of “corporate personhood” to rest for good, but I am so grateful to this person of integrity for standing in the “jaws of the beast” and declaring the truth. And I am also grateful to the Community Environmental Legal Defense Fund (CELDF) for their generous work in helping communities across the country adopt Community Bills of Rights that ban such projects as fracking, sludge dumping and other as violations of the community¹s right to a sustainable energy and farming future. Please take the time to read the language of Judge Debbie O'Dell-Seneca's decision. It is beautiful and inspiring and true.

2013/04/14

SchwartzReport: USA at Bottom in Child Well Being — and Tops in Military Spending, Imprisonment, Divorce, and Obesity

06 Family, 07 Health, 07 Other Atrocities, 09 Justice, 11 Society, Civil Society, Corruption, Government, Ineptitude

U.S. Ranks Near Bottom of UNICEF Report on Child Well-being
KATIE MCDONOUGH, Assistant Editor – Salon

The cliché holds that: Our children are our future. If that is true we don't have much of a future. We don't seem to give a damn about our children and, as the UNICEF report makes clear, it shows.

The United States ranked in the bottom four of a United Nations report on child well-being. Among 29 countries, America landed second from the bottom in child poverty and held a similarly dismal position when it came to ‘child life satisfaction.”

Keeping the U.S. company at the bottom of the report, which gauged material well-being, overall health, access to housing and education, were Lithuania, Latvia and Romania, three of the poorest countries in the survey.

Continue reading “SchwartzReport: USA at Bottom in Child Well Being — and Tops in Military Spending, Imprisonment, Divorce, and Obesity”

2013/04/132013/04/13

Mini-Me: Guantanamo & New York — Two Sides of Criminal Insanity

04 Education, 11 Society, Academia, Civil Society, Cultural Intelligence, Government, Idiocy, IO Deeds of War, Military

Huh?

Detainees, U.S. guards clash at Guantanamo Bay

Carlos Warner, a U.S. lawyer representing some of those detainees, told CNN late last month detainees have become increasingly frustrated with “very dire, dire conditions” and their sense that the current legal process leaves them in limbo indefinitely.

“It leaves them with the prospect of the only way we leave Guantanamo is death,” Warner said. “Unfortunately, I think the men are ready to embrace this.”

Marcus Aurelius: White House Taxing Veterans & Military

Corruption, Government, Military

BOTTOM LINE, UP FRONT: Once again, POTUS is seeking to stick it to the military via his budget.

Current issues are escalating costs for a apparently all TRICARE categories, depressed pay raises for active duty military, and restrained cost of living allowances, via “chained CPI,” for military retired pay.

Invite your attention to Military Officers Association of America's (MOAA's) graphics at links in basic message below. MOAA is going to visit Congress on 17 April to educate our elected representative. They badly need supporting e-mail fires from all of us. Hit the “Take Action” or “deliver a barrage of emails” links below to be taken to their legislative action center where they have prescripted but tailorable e-mail texts ready. Send early and often. Being a retiree, MOAA member, or even a veteran is not required. We can use help from anyone with access to a computer who can click a mouse.

Remember — those of us who are veterans and retirees at some time long ago wrote that blank check to the US Government, “payable for any amount up to and including death.” We served as directed. For those of us still surviving, it appears that the Government is abrogating its part of the deal. We can use everybody's help on this one. And the next one, the one after that, and the one after that. We have a new persistent conflict over whether or not the government will honor its past promises to military personnel.

Help MOAA Storm the Hill

Now is the time to stand up and make your voice heard to reinforce MOAA leaders' efforts on Capitol Hill next week.

On Wednesday, April 17, more than 160 national, state, and local MOAA representatives will “Storm the Hill” to visit the offices of nearly every US senator and representative.

They'll be making the case against big DoD-proposed TRICARE fee hikes, an active duty pay raise cap, and more.

There's never been a more important time to add your voice and deliver a barrage of emails to remind your legislators that MOAA's Hill-stormers are backed by thousands more of their constituents.

Let's hang together to oppose “taxing military people first.”

2013/04/13

DefDog: The Technology of Political Control — Hardware, Software, & Liveware

07 Other Atrocities, Corruption, Government, IO Deeds of War, Law Enforcement, Military

An interesting article….

Turkish Central News

The technology of political control is made up of hardware, software,and liveware

As a people, we are facing the most serious threat to humanity in recorded history – the systematic stripping away of traditional freedoms by governments worldwide. And that includes all governments. It is a situation far more serious than the plagues of the Middle Ages that nearly wiped us out as a species. It is a threat never before seen in ten thousand years of human history.

A question of control

A number of separate threats have recently converged. An extremely dangerous situation has been created. Governments have been given the opportunity – and the means – to permanently wrest control from their populations. Bureaucrats are about to realize their dream of absolute power. It is a nightmare far worse than anything George Orwell might have imagined.

Technology is providing the tools to government. We are now at a point in human evolution where your government – if it so chooses – can control every aspect of your life from cradle to grave.
We face three separate threats. Together these threats combine to give government a stranglehold on our civil liberties – a death grip on our traditional freedoms.

Threat #1 – Computers have taken over surveillance. Surveillance is now automated. Entire populations can be supervised and monitored in real time. Half your life, including your last credit card purchase, is already on a database. Computers eavesdrop on all electronic and telephone communications using word-recognition and voice-recognition software. Video cameras are everywhere – inside and outside – they can recognize vehicle license plates and even human faces. And all this information, all these databases, are cross-referenced and tied together – by computers. Taken together, it’s called dataveillance. It makes it easy to track certain classes of people. Like minorities. Or dissidents. Or grassroots political movements. Or anyone who dares think for himself.

Threat #2 – Militarization has taken over the police. The cops are now using some very nasty weapons. Half the stuff they use is prohibited by the Geneva Convention and the Hague Declaration. The government can’t use it in war, buttheir own population is fair game. Modern police technology gives a whole new meaning to crowd control – they use sticky foam laced with chemical irritants. It gives a whole new meaning to interrogation – they use new mark-free interrogation tools. And new friendlier, more humane weapons like plastic bullets, pepper gas, and stun guns – that still maim, scalp, burn, mutilate, and kill.

Threat #3 – Big business has taken over proliferation. Any government bureaucrat can buy this stuff. Most of these high-tech gadgets are dual-use. You can use them for benign things like traffic control – or nasty things like people control. Private companies are reaping huge profits manufacturing and exporting this nightmarish technology. Research and development has gone berserk. Who cares about trivial things like human rights when there’s a buck to be made? Heck, if anyone complains just order the $100,000mobile execution vehicle – it comes complete with lethal injection machine, steel holding cell, and areas for “witnesses” and “staff”.

Read full article.

2013/04/132013/04/13

Marcus Aurelius: Politically-Correct Pentagon Gets It Half Right — On Religious Counterintelligence

Cultural Intelligence, Government, Ineptitude, Military

New York Post, April 11, 2013, Pg. 27

Perils Of A Politically Correct Pentagon

By Michael A. Walsh

One of the core functions of government is to defend the nation from all enemies, foreign and domestic — that’s part of the oath of enlistment that all service personnel take. But only a flinty, clear-eyed — and politically incorrect — assessment of all threats can enable the military can do its job.

Today, however, the brass at the Pentagon seems hell-bent on turning the world's most powerful military into an arm of the PC Police, a fresh field for “politically correct” bureaucrats on which to push their morally blind relativism.

Take the recent Defense Department briefing document that classified Catholics and Evangelical Protestants as “extremists” — the moral equivalent of al Qaeda and the Ku Klux Klan. It also lumped Christians together with free-floating “Islamophobia,” Hamas, Sunni Muslims, the Jewish Defense League and the backwoods Hutaree militia as potential threats to the Republic.

“Religious extremism is not limited to any single religion, ethnic group, or region of the world,” the briefing paper notes, which is true: The military must prepare for every eventuality, however remote, which is why we have plans for war with Canada and France, should the need arise.

But including half the country’s population on a list of potential terrorists does seem a bit extreme — especially when some 40 percent of active-duty military self-identify as evangelicals.

The Army quickly disavowed the presentation and blamed it on faulty “Internet research” by an Army Reserve figure outside the chain of command.