Government – Page 655 – Public Intelligence Blog

2012/12/292012/12/29

SchwartzReport: Black-Market Abortions — When Legislators Let Ideological Money Ignore the Reality of Poor Women

07 Health, Civil Society, Corruption, Cultural Intelligence, Government

Black-Market Abortion Drug Sales Appear To Be Rising

The New Republic‘s cover headline this month is a topic that pro-choice activists speak about occasionally amongst themselves, but rarely address in public: “The Rise of DIY Abortions.” The reason that it's not much discussed in public forums is that reproductive health advocates are data-driven people, and one thing that's nearly impossible to get data on is the prevalence of women quietly buying an ulcer medication named Cytotec from sleazy online dealers and using that to terminate pregnacies at home, far out of the reach of doctors and agencies like the CDC or the Guttmacher Institute that compile statistics on abortions. The writer of the piece, Ada Calhoun, admits that there's no way to know how common these black-market abortions are, but points out that the rise in websites peddling Cytotec specifically to terminate pregnancy (instead for its on-label use to treat ulcers) makes it hard to deny that this is a growing trend:

Read full article in Slate.

Continue reading “SchwartzReport: Black-Market Abortions — When Legislators Let Ideological Money Ignore the Reality of Poor Women”

2012/12/282012/12/29

Mini-Me: Sandy Hook Massacre — Still Conflicted

Collective Intelligence, Corruption, Cultural Intelligence, Government, IO Deeds of War, Law Enforcement, Media

Huh?

Sandy Hook: Huge Hoax and Anti-Gun “Psy Op”

By Jim Fetzer and Dennis Cimino

Jim Fetzer, a former Marine Corps officer, is McKnight Professor Emeritus at the University of Minnesota Duluth.

Dennis Cimino, who has extensive engineering and support experience with military electronics, predominantly US Navy Combat Systems, was the Navy’s top EMI troubleshooter before he went to work for Raytheon in the 1980s.

There are obvious signs that tell the difference between genuine and fabricated event. The recent shooting of police and firemen responding to a deliberately-set fire has all the signs of being a bona fide event: there is a single consistent narrative, one shooter has been clearly identified, and there has been no good reason to doubt that the subject, William Spengler, went off the rails and committed the crimes. There are many articles about it, which relate the same basic themes: “Killer of 2 NY Firemen had semiautomatic rifle, left note”: “Police say the man who lured firefighters in Webster, N.Y., into a deadly ambush had the same make and caliber semiautomatic rifle as the one used in the Connecticut school massacre. Webster Police Chief Gerald Pickering said Tuesday that 62-year-old William Spengler was armed with a .223-caliber Bushmaster rifle, a .38-caliber revolver and a 12-gauge shotgun in Monday’s ambush. Spengler killed two firefighters and wounded two others before fatally shooting himself.”

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2012/12/272012/12/28

Jerry Boykin: Benghazi — Focus on Failure of DoD to Rescue with Comment & Links by Robert Steele

Corruption, Government, Ineptitude, Military

BOYKIN: Congress asking the wrong questions on Benghazi

Lack of military response should be top issue

Washington Times, 26 December 2012

“Iknew wherever I was that you thought of me and that if I got in a tight place, you would come — if alive.” This statement was contained in a letter dated March 10, 1864, written by Maj. Gen. William Tecumseh Sherman to Maj. Gen. Ulysses S. Grant. It expresses an ageless ethos among warriors, especially those within the U.S. military. The commitment to come to the aid of fellow Americans in times of duress and danger has always been one of the foundations of America’s fighting forces. Yet that appears to have changed on Sept. 11, 2012, in Benghazi, Libya, when no effort was made to respond to the calls for help by U.S. Ambassador J. Christopher Stevens and his CIA team at the U.S. Consulate facility.

Why was there no attempt to save the lives of the ambassador and his colleagues, beyond sending an unarmed drone to observe their demise? The congressional committees investigating the events in Benghazi seem to have focused on the Sunday talk-show statements of Ambassador to the United Nations Susan Rice, who blamed the attack on an obscure anti-Islam video made by a relatively unknown man in California.

Read full article.

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2012/12/272012/12/27

Chuck Spinney: Patrick Seale on The Kurds Seizing the Day

02 Diplomacy, Cultural Intelligence, Ethics, Government, IO Deeds of Peace

FYI … Another excellent report by Patrick Seale.

The Kurds Seize Their Chance

by Patrick Seale

Agence Global 25 Dec 2012

Many Kurds have come to believe that the present prolonged turmoil in the Middle East — in Syria and Iraq and, to a lesser extent, in Iran and Turkey — is giving them their best chance of self-determination in modern times. They are determined to seize it. It could be that the map of the region is being redrawn before our eyes.

Read full article.

Phi Beta Iota: This is a no-brainer for anyone with intelligence and integrity. The artificial boundaries imposed by centuries of empire are collapsing, in part because they are unaffordable to maintain, in part because Epoch B has begun and the world is reverting to the pre-empire eras where indigenous peoples in close harmony with nature established natural boundaries over the course of centuries. The US Government, nominally led in foreign affairs by the Department of State, is ignorant and arrogant. It has the temerity to believe that it can a) know better and b) impose its ignorant arrogant will on others. Those days are over. What we should be doing is striving to offer all dictators an exit strategy as Ambassador Mark Palmer (our choice for Undersecretary of Public Diplomacy) has been recommending, getting serious about self-determination, and butting out of the internal affairs of others.

See Also:

Mark Palmer, Breaking the Real Axis of Evil: How to Oust the World's Last Dictators by 2025 (Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, 2005)

Philip Allott, The Health of Nations: Society and Law beyond the State (Cambridge University Press, 2002)

2012/12/272012/12/27

Marcus Aurelius: CIA Self-Destruction Continues…

Government, Idiocy, Ineptitude

CIA's Secret Security Group Emerges From Shadows

High-risk assignments draw many from U.S. Special Forces

By Greg Miller and Julie Tate

The rapid collapse of a U.S. diplomatic compound in Libya exposed the vulnerabilities of State Department facilities overseas. But the CIA’s ability to fend off a second attack that same night provided a glimpse of a key element in the agency’s defensive arsenal: a secret security force created after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.

Two of the Americans killed in Benghazi were members of the CIA’s Global Response Staff, an innocuously named organization that has recruited hundreds of former U.S. Special Forces operatives to serve as armed guards for the agency’s spies.

The GRS, as it is known, is designed to stay in the shadows, training teams to work undercover and provide an unobtrusive layer of security for CIA officers in high-risk outposts.

. . . . . . . .

Bodyguard details have become so essential to espionage that the CIA has overhauled its training program at the Farm — its case officer academy in southern Virginia — to teach spies the basics of working with GRS teams.

. . . . . . . . .
“They don’t learn languages, they’re not meeting foreign nationals and they’re not writing up intelligence reports,” a former U.S. intelligence official said. Their main tasks are to map escape routes from meeting places, pat down informants and provide an “envelope” of security, the former official said, all while knowing that “if push comes to shove, you’re going to have to shoot.”

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2012/12/252012/12/25

Marcus Aurelius: Maryland Traffic Cameras Caught Out — Issuing Tickets to Cars at Full Stop

Corruption, Cultural Intelligence, Government, Ineptitude, Law Enforcement

I'm am an opponent of speed cameras and red light cameras. Following two articles, about a local case where a driver stopped at a light and doing zero mph gets charged by a red light camera for doing 38 mph, makes the case, IMHO. This may be the one time in 10,000 where the equipment and people screw up. It could be the one time in one hundred million. No matter. If any single element of this case is as reported, IMHO it justifies Federal intervention via statute or Constitutional amendment to prohibit use of these unattended surveillance devices anywhere, for any purpose, within US National territory. Every contractor and the Balto PD officer involved should also be terminated. Seem like overkill? I disagree.

Speed camera nabs car stopped at light

By Michael S. Rosenwald

TheWashingtonPost, Dec 14, 2012 03:32 PM EST

Read full article.

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2012/12/242012/12/24