Government – Page 734 – Public Intelligence Blog

What a surprise!

U.S. ‘info ops' programs dubious, costly

Tom Vanden Brook and Ray Locker

USA TODAY, 29 February 2012

WASHINGTON – As the Pentagon has sought to sell wars in Iraq and Afghanistan to often-hostile populations there, it has spent hundreds of millions of dollars on poorly tracked marketing and propaganda campaigns that military leaders like to call “information operations,” the modern equivalent of psychological warfare.

From 2005 to 2009, such spending rose from $9 million to $580 million a year mostly in Iraq and Afghanistan, Pentagon and congressional records show. Last year, spending dropped to $202 million as the Iraq War wrapped up. A USA TODAY investigation, based on dozens of interviews and a series of internal military reports, shows that Pentagon officials have little proof the programs work and they won't make public where the money goes. In Iraq alone, more than $173 million was paid to what were identified only as “miscellaneous foreign contractors.”

“What we do as I.O. is almost gimmicky,” says Army Col. Paul Yingling, who served three tours in Iraq between 2003 and 2009, including as an information operations specialist. “Doing posters, fliers or radio ads. These things are unserious.”

Read full article.

Phi Beta Iota: The real issue here is the lack of “management” across the entire US Government. The Office of Management and Budget (OMB) does not manage anything. There are no standards for return on investment, inter-agency collaboration, even justification in the public interest. Budgeting is a corrupt political “game” in which the Cabinet Secretaries represent the recipients of taxpayer funds, not the taxpayers. Were OMB serious, intelligence, information operations, and public diplomacy would be managed as one account, an Open Source Agency under diplomatic auspices would establish the gold standard for truth, and no money would be invested in contractors whose primary qualifications consist of contributing to Congressional political action campaigns and playing golf. The truth at any cost lowers all others costs. We are nowhere near getting a grip on the truth.

2012/02/292012/02/29

David Swanson: Virginia Says No to NDAA Lawless Imprisonment of US Citizens – States Separating from Federal – Plan for Collapse?

Government, Law Enforcement

Virginia Says No to Lawless Imprisonment

Good things do come out of the Virginia state legislature. That normally reprehensible body has just stood up to the federal outrage that has come to be known as the NDAA. The letters stand for the National Defense Authorization Act, but at issue here is not the bulk of that bill. Virginia's state government has no objection to dumping our grandchildren's unearned pay into the pockets of war profiteers while our schools lack funding. At issue is the presidential power to lock people up without a trial, which was slipped into the latest military funding bill late last year and signed into law by President Barack Obama on New Year's Eve. In fact, Virginia's legislature does not object to that abuse except in one particular circumstance, namely when the victim of it is a U.S. citizen. But in that circumstance, Virginia says Hell No.

Locally in Charlottesville, we rallied at Republican Congressman Robert Hurt's office.
http://charlottesvillepeace.org/node/2629

We urged him to vote No, and he did so, saying:

“After studying the controversial provisions and after hearing from many in the Fifth District, I concluded that the detainee provisions in the bill did not provide clear and unambiguous protection of the constitutional rights of American citizens. For this reason, I opposed the bill on final passage.”
http://charlottesvillepeace.org/node/2635

Groups from across the political spectrum, including the Bill of Rights Defense Committee, urged passage of a bill in Virginia's state legislature to nullify the new provisions.
http://charlottesvillepeace.org/node/2692

Both houses have now passed the bill by veto-proof margins.
http://leg1.state.va.us/cgi-bin/legp504.exe?121+sum+HB1160

Read full article.

Phi Beta Iota: Nullification is the softer gentler preamble to secession. The states, many of them over-invested in Federal bonds and many of them facing their own financial crises, are now starting to plan for the collapse of the US Goverment or economy, and becoming more alert to opportunities of state nullification of federal mandates. During this transition period resilience and sustainability will be “bottom-up” in nature, and those states that “assume” a loss of all federal funding after 2013, and plan for it, will do better than those states that assume federal (borrowed) largesse will continue. This will impact heavily on universities that rely on federal funding for most of their research.

2012/02/28

Reference: Buried No Longer – Confronting America’s Water Infrastructure Challenge

12 Water, Government

Water Infrastructure Cost Report

Source

Phi Beta Iota: The Office of Management and Budget (OMB) has never really “managed” anything. They blew off the “M” forever in the 1970's and became a budget chop shop unable to render intelligence with integrity to the Executive. At the same time, the Cabinet departments are focused on protecting budget share for their stakeholders (the recipients of the taxpayer's revenue, not the taxpayer's themselves), and neither they, nor the US Intelligence Community now costing us $80 billion a year, are capable of doing responsible analytics in the national interest. The lack of intelligence (decision-support) with (holistic) integrity across all organizations is the central challenge of our time.

Journal: Reflections on Integrity UPDATED + Integrity RECAP

2012/02/27

Chuck Spinney: When Lies for a Cause Destroy Science

Academia, Corruption, Earth Intelligence, Government

Why It Is Time to Clean the Augean Stables of Climate Science

Lying for the Cause?

by FRANKLIN C. SPINNEY, Counterpunch, 27 February 2012

(Note: This differs slightly from the original because I have corrected a few typos and grammatical errors and added one short clarifying string of words in [ ]'s.)

On 24 February, the Scientific American carried a revealing blog by John Horgan entitled, Should Global-Warming Activists Lie to Defend Their Cause? Horgan is the Director of the Center for Science Writings at the Stevens Institute of Technology. He analyzes his question in the context of a discussion he held in a freshman humanities class. The subject was the morality of Dr. Peter Gleick’s use of identity theft to steal documents from the Heartland Institute. Horgan is a promoter of the theory of anthropogenic global warming (AGW), and he is clearly at pains to rationalize the implications of Gleick’s caper. Included in Gleick’s distribution was a forged document, although Gleick denies any connection to its fabrication. Of particular interest to this essay is Horgan’s last sentence, because it unintentionally places the politicization of the anthropogenic global warming (AGW) debate into sharp relief.

Continue reading “Chuck Spinney: When Lies for a Cause Destroy Science”

2012/02/272012/02/27

Mini-Me: Wyoming Planning for US/Federal Collapse

01 Agriculture, 05 Energy, 07 Other Atrocities, 10 Security, 11 Society, 12 Water, Collective Intelligence, Earth Intelligence, Government, Strategy

Sad as the comment might be, this makes sense. Every state should do doing similar planning. The next major collapse is scheduled for 2013-2014. The next step up would be regional (nine nations) planning boards for agriculture, energy, food, and water. This summer may be the last calm period for some time.

Wyoming House advances doomsday bill

Jeremy Pelzer

Star-Tribune, 24 February 2012

CHEYENNE — State representatives on Friday advanced legislation to launch a study into what Wyoming should do in the event of a complete economic or political collapse in the United States.

House Bill 85 passed on first reading by a voice vote. It would create a state-run government continuity task force, which would study and prepare Wyoming for potential catastrophes, from disruptions in food and energy supplies to a complete meltdown of the federal government.

The task force would look at the feasibility of

Wyoming issuing its own alternative currency, if needed. And House members approved an amendment Friday by state Rep. Kermit Brown, R-Laramie, to have the task force also examine conditions under which Wyoming would need to implement its own military draft, raise a standing army, and acquire strike aircraft and an aircraft carrier.

The bill’s sponsor, state Rep. David Miller, R-Riverton, has said he doesn’t anticipate any major crises hitting America anytime soon. But with the national debt exceeding $15 trillion and protest movements growing around the country, Miller said Wyoming — which has a comparatively good economy and sound state finances — needs to make sure it’s protected should any unexpected emergency hit the U.S.

Several House members spoke in favor of the legislation, saying there was no harm in preparing for the worst.

“I don’t think there’s anyone in this room today what would come up here and say that this country is in good shape, that the world is stable and in good shape — because that is clearly not the case,” state Rep. Lorraine Quarberg, R-Thermopolis, said. “To put your head in the sand and think that nothing bad’s going to happen, and that we have no obligation to the citizens of the state of Wyoming to at least have the discussion, is not healthy.”

Wyoming’s Department of Homeland Security already has a statewide crisis management plan, but it doesn’t cover what the state should do in the event of an extreme nationwide political or economic collapse. In recent years, lawmakers in at least six states have introduced legislation to create a state currency, all unsuccessfully.

The task force would include state lawmakers, the director of the Wyoming Department of Homeland Security, the Wyoming attorney general and the Wyoming National Guard’s adjutant general, among others.

The bill must pass two more House votes before it would head to the Senate for consideration. The original bill appropriated $32,000 for the task force, though the Joint Appropriations Committee slashed that number in half earlier this week.

University of Wyoming political science professor Jim King said the potential for a complete unraveling of the U.S. government and economy is “astronomically remote” in the foreseeable future.

But King noted that the federal government set up a Continuity of Government Commission in 2002, of which former U.S. Sen. Al Simpson, R-Wyo., was co-chairman. However, King said he didn’t know of any states that had established a similar board.

2012/02/272012/02/27

Penguin: Mercenary Armies – What Does This Mean?

Commerce, Corruption, Government, Military, Peace Intelligence

This appears to be another piece of the larger trend toward the complete failure of all governments — the most sophisticated governments have now become the most inept and the most corrupt (in the holistic sense of the term). This does not bode well for humanity.

A Look At The World's Most Powerful Mercenary Armies

Security giant G4S is the second-largest private employer on earth

BusinessInsider, 26 February 2012
With more than 625,000 employees, this listed security giant is the second-largest private employer in the world(behind Wal-Mart). While some of its business is focused on routine bank, prison and airport security, G4S also plays an important role in crisis-zones right around the world.In 2008, G4S swallowed up Armorgroup, whose 9,000-strong army of guards has protected about one third of all non-military supply convoys in Iraq (it's also notorious for its wild parties and for having Afghan warlords on its payroll).

But the combined group has a security presence in more than 125 countries, including some of the most dangerous parts of Africa and Latin America, where it offers government agencies and private companies heavily-armed security forces, land-mine clearance, military intelligence and training.

Source Page

2012/02/27

DefDog: National Security versus National Well-Being

Corruption, Government, IO Impotency

Although this is about India's version and a year old, I fear that the issues they identify there also exist in ours, but to a much larger degree….

NCTC: National Confusion on Terror

New Kerala, 2011

By South Asia Intelligence Review: The crisis in India today is one of capacities, and this cannot be addressed by the reinvention of institutional forms. It doesn't matter if our responses are centralised or decentralised, as long as the executive agencies remain infirm, under-manned, under-trained and under-equipped.

Our principal problems lie, not in architecture, but in manpower, materials and execution. We have eviscerated our institutions over decades, and now believe that the solution lies in creating layer upon layer of meta-institutions to ‘monitor', ‘coordinate' and ‘oversee' this largely dysfunctional apparatus.
Counter-terrorism: The Architecture of Failure, November 24, 2011

The National Counter-terrorism Centre (NCTC) is an ill-conceived, redundant and derivative, vanity project, which aspires to imitate its namesake in the US, without the strength, the sinews, the resources or the constitutional context that would make such aspirations attainable.

Read full article.

Category: Government

DefDog: DoD Information Operations Compromised

David Swanson: Virginia Says No to NDAA Lawless Imprisonment of US Citizens – States Separating from Federal – Plan for Collapse?

Reference: Buried No Longer – Confronting America’s Water Infrastructure Challenge

Chuck Spinney: When Lies for a Cause Destroy Science

Mini-Me: Wyoming Planning for US/Federal Collapse

Penguin: Mercenary Armies – What Does This Mean?

DefDog: National Security versus National Well-Being