Government – Page 706 – Public Intelligence Blog

2012/05/242012/05/24

Patrick Meier: Disaster Response, Self-Organization and Resilience: Shocking Insights from the Haiti Humanitarian Assistance Evaluation

Corruption, Government, IO Impotency, Non-Governmental

Disaster Response, Self-Organization and Resilience: Shocking Insights from the Haiti Humanitarian Assistance Evaluation

Tulane University and the State University of Haiti just released a rather damming evaluation of the humanitarian response to the 2010 earthquake that struck Haiti on January 12th. The comprehensive assessment, which takes a participatory approach and applies a novel resilience framework, finds that despite several billion dollars in “aid”, humanitarian assistance did not make a detectable contribution to the resilience of the Haitian population and in some cases increased certain communities' vulnerability and even caused harm. Welcome to supply-side humanitarian assistance directed by external actors.

“All we need is information. Why can't we get information?”

A quote taken from one of many focus groups conducted by the evaluators. “There was little to no information exchange between the international community tasked with humanitarian response and the Haitian NGOs, civil society or affected persons / communities themselves.” Information is critical for effective humanitarian assistance, which should include two objectives: “preventing excess mortality and human suffering in the immediate, and in the longer term, improving the community’s ability to respond to potential future shocks.”

This longer term objective thus focuses on resilience, which the evaluation team defines as follows:

Continue reading “Patrick Meier: Disaster Response, Self-Organization and Resilience: Shocking Insights from the Haiti Humanitarian Assistance Evaluation”

2012/05/222012/05/22

Josh Kilbourn: Unemployed College Graduates – Trending Ugly

03 Economy, 07 Other Atrocities, 11 Society, Commerce, Commercial Intelligence, Corruption, General Accountability Office, Government, Office of Management and Budget

The Benefits Of A College Education

Tyler Durden

ZeroHedge, 05/21/2012

… Are what again? As the following graphic from IBD demonstrates, for the first time in history, a majority of jobless workers over 25 have attended some college, and now outnumber those without a job who simply have a high school diploma or less. But at least those in the fomer category have tens of thousands of non-dischargeable debt to show for it.

education vs unemployment_0 — Click on Image to Enlarge

.. Are what again? As the following graphic from IBD demonstrates, for the first time in history, a majority of jobless workers over 25 have attended some college, and now outnumber those without a job who simply have a high school diploma or less. But at least those in the fomer category have tens of thousands of non-dischargeable debt to show for it.

Read full article.

2012/05/222012/05/22

Marcus Aurelius: USG Giving Away Alaskan Islands & Oil to Russia? Since 1977? All Secret, All Henry Kissinger…

02 Diplomacy, 06 Russia, Corruption, Government

Marcus-Aurelius-150x150 — Marcus Aurelius

Some good stuff including giveaways to Russia done in secret, no publicity at all.

http://www.statedepartmentwatch.org/index.htm

Giveaways to Russia

■ Giveaway of 8 American Alaskan Islands and Vast Oil-Rich Seabeds to Russians

■ Henry Kissinger Ordered the Alaskan Island Giveaway Secretly in 1977

■ Giveaway of Southern Sakhalin Island and its Vast Oil to Russia Injures 46 Countries

■ State Department Helps Russian Bogus Claim to North Pole

■ United Nations Helps Giveaway of American Islands and Seabeds to Russians

State Department Imperils 70 American Islands and Resource Zones

■ FailureIn Caribbean Sea and Pacific Ocean Loses Millions of Square Miles
Of Oil, Fishery, and Other Resources; Allows Giveaways to Other Countries

Continue reading “Marcus Aurelius: USG Giving Away Alaskan Islands & Oil to Russia? Since 1977? All Secret, All Henry Kissinger…”

2012/05/212012/05/21

Eagle: An End to Blind US Jewish Support for Neo-Nazi Zionist Israeli Government?

06 Genocide, 07 Other Atrocities, 09 Justice, 10 Security, 11 Society, Corruption, Cultural Intelligence, Government, Military

Cross Talk : Farewell Israel?

Veterans Today, 21 May 2012

Is the American-Jewish romance with Israel coming to an end?
Are the American Jews known for their liberal views distancing themselves from Israel?
Or is it simply an overstatement?
Do they support the current Israeli policies?
Does the Israeli lobby represent their views?
And do they have a strong connection to the Holy Land?
Cross Talk with Norman Finkelstein, Daniel Pollak and Mouin Rabbani.

cover knowing too much — Amazon Page Pending

Norman Finkelstein's new book on the American Jewish community has been both widely praised and criticized by influential writers. So is the American-Jewish romance with Israel coming to an end? Are the American Jews known for their liberal views distancing themselves from Israel? Or is it simply an overstatement? Do they support the current Israeli policies? Does the Israeli lobby represent their views? And do they have a strong connection to the Holy Land? CT-ing with Norman Finkelstein, Daniel Pollak and Mouin Rabbani.

Phi Beta Iota: Israel is not the only albatross around the neck of the USA, there are others, but Israel (its government, not its people) is the one that has most often committed atrocities and sabotaged the USA with espionage, corruption, and inducing US Jews to commit treason–we refer especially to all those holding Top Secret / Sensitive Compartmented Information clearances who are either publicly or in some cases silently dual-citizens. What has been done to the Palestinian peoples has been a long-running crime against humanity, right up there with undeclared wars that produce depleted uranium babies and destroy entire societies for no decent moral reason. The Zionization of US foreign policy–and the castration of US financial policy–are two great crimes against humanity that are directly linked to the Zionist state of Israel and its twin agents, Mossad and Goldman Sachs/AIG et al. The Israeli attack on the USS Liberty did it for us–we would have wiped out the originating airfield and expelled the Israeli Embassy, and then removed the building from the planet, sowing salt in the dirt and making it a memorial to the perfidy of “friends.” We favor a two state solution that restores the Palestinian lands back to Biblical times, tears down the walls that Joseph Stalin would have been proud to call his own, and makes Jerusalem an international open city with a multi-religious governing council that excludes all state claims on any part of Jerusalem.

2009 The Attack on the Liberty: The Untold Story of Israel's Deadly 1967 Assault on a U.S. Spy Ship

2007 The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy

2003 They Dare to Speak Out: People and Institutions Confront Israel's Lobby

2012/05/21

Reference: Warren Pollock and Reinhardt of Enterprise Corruption

Commerce, Commercial Intelligence, Corruption, Government

Newsletter writer “Reinhardt” joins me for his first public appearance anywhere. Concerned with the Enron debacle, Reinhardt discovered a repeated pattern of industrial and political corruption over history that applies to critical issues of today.

Starting in 1993, Reinhardt began a person business journal. Its was a journal of things that just did not seem right in the world of high finance. In the process of keeping a journal he learned what to pay attention to and why to pay attention to it. He looked at media, political, and business propaganda from a different perspective. He noticed which events got the most airtime were never the most important. It was always the under-reported events which were most important.” Reinhard thew away his history books as he studied booms and busts going as far back as 4000 BC. Reinhardt has applied that knowledge and critical thinking approach to his ongoing analysis of current events.

Enterprise Corruption http://www.enterprisecorruption.com/

Important points covered.

Enron . Tyco . 2008 Market Crash . Military movement provide cheap labor for trade routes . Dutch Settlement Scheme . Emmegration . Special Interest . Long View . Critical Thinking . Overview . modern silk road . northern distribution network . world trade . military use of trade routes . military industrial complex . corporate imperative . Afghanistan . US military . war . The fallacy of Adam Smith . the fallacy of ideology . the fallacy of free markets . government involvement in industry . trends in labor value . dutch east india company . socialism communism . divide and conquer . totalitarianism in our fascist regime . think tanks . loss of control

Phi Beta Iota: An extraordinary contribution by Warren Pollock and his guest “Reinhardt” of Newsweek. Tip of the Hat to Josh Kilbourn for the pointer.

John C. Bogle, Battle for the Soul of Capitalism

William Greider, The Soul of Capitalism: Opening Paths to a Moral Economy

W. Cleon Skoussen, The Naked Capitalist

Carroll Quigley, Tragedy & Hope: A History of the World in Our Time

2012/05/21

Paul Craig Roberts: Recovery or Collapse? I’m Betting Collapse

Commerce, Commercial Intelligence, Corruption, Cultural Intelligence, Government

Recovery or Collapse? Bet on Collapse

May 20, 2012

The US financial system and, probably, the financial system of Europe, like the police, no longer serves a useful social purpose.

In the US the police have proven themselves to be a greater threat to public safety than private sector criminals. I just googled “police brutality” and up came 183,000,000 results. (Here are two recent brutal assaults, one deadly, by police on hapless individuals: http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/lanow/2012/05/kelly-thomas-video-dad-they-are-killing-me-.html and http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article31364.htm )

The cost to society of the private financial system is even higher. Writing in CounterPunch (May 18), Rob Urie reports that two years ago Andrew Haldane, executive Director for Financial Stability at the Bank of England (the UK’s version of the Federal Reserve) said that the financial crisis, now four years old, will in the end cost the world economy between $60 trillion and $200 trillion in lost GDP. If Urie’s report is correct, this is an astonishing admission from a member of the ruling elite. http://www.counterpunch.org/2012/05/18/the-true-costs-of-bank-crises/print

Try to get your mind around these figures. The US GDP, the largest in the world, is about 15 trillion. What Haldane is telling us is that the financial crisis will end up costing the world lost real income between 4 and 13 times the size of the current Gross Domestic Product of the United States. This could turn out to be an optimistic forecast.

In the end, the financial crisis could destroy Western civilization.

Continue reading “Paul Craig Roberts: Recovery or Collapse? I'm Betting Collapse”

2012/05/21

Chuck Spinney: The Afghanistan Exit – Looting the Useful Idiots to the Bitter End

04 Inter-State Conflict, 08 Wild Cards, 10 Security, Cultural Intelligence, Government, Idiocy, Military

When Alexander the Great decided to leave Afghanistan, his plan was to exit via the Khyber Pass and march though what is now Pakistan and thence into India. But the Khyber was blocked by a warring Pashtun tribe. Legend has it that Alex's exit strategy was to bribe another Pashtun tribe to open the door by attacking and driving off the first tribe. The gambit worked and he escaped with his forces largely intact, Alexander looked shrewd in the history books. But is that the whole story?

I have often wondered if old Alex was snookered by two tribes in cahoots in a scheme to extort money and divide the proceeds from an invader desperate to leave. Of course we will never know if this actually happened, but as the following report in yesterday's Sunday Times suggests, my speculation has a quintessential Pashtun flavor and is therefore not outside the realm of probability.

Chuck Spinney
Port Cogolin, France

Afghan Troops And Tailban In Pact To Loot NATO Convoys

Secret alliances threaten to undermine the West's strategy of handing more responsibility for security to local forces

By Miles Amoore and Christina Lamb, London Sunday Times, May 20, 2012

THE two men should be sworn enemies. One is a Taliban commander waging what he says is a holy war against foreign soldiers in Afghanistan. The other is an Afghan army officer trained and paid by Nato to fight the Taliban.

Yet rather than do battle, the two men have forged a secret alliance. In the area of Ghazni province where both are based, just an hour's drive south of Kabul, they collaborate to loot Nato supply convoys, dividing up the proceeds. They even share intelligence about military operations.

Continue reading “Chuck Spinney: The Afghanistan Exit – Looting the Useful Idiots to the Bitter End”