Category: Military

Posted on

Marcus Aurelius: Hagel Sacrifices People Instead of Systems Waste

Ineptitude, Military
Marcus Aurelius
Marcus Aurelius

I attach two-day old SECDEF estimates for Congress of what will happen if sequester continues into next fiscal year.  Big idea:  emphasis on RIFs of military and civilian personnel in preference to furloughs of DoD civilians.   SECDEF doesn't mention any specific numbers, but following would not surprise me:

*Active Army military personnel:  RIF of 70K to 110K, dropping currently projected end strength of 490K to 380K to 420K..

*DoD civilians:  RIF of 10 percent to 25 percent across DoD, meaning, for Army, RIF of roughly 27K to 68K Army civilians and, for DoD, RIF of 80K to 200K DoD civilians including Army.

2013-07-10 SecDef to SASC

Continue reading “Marcus Aurelius: Hagel Sacrifices People Instead of Systems Waste”

Posted on

Chuck Spinney: Israeli Genocide & Other Atrocities Against the Bedouin — Funded by the US Taxpayer!

06 Genocide, 07 Other Atrocities, 08 Wild Cards, 11 Society, Corruption, Government, Idiocy, IO Deeds of War, Military, Peace Intelligence
Chuck Spinney
Chuck Spinney

Written by an Israeli activist.

Published on Friday, July 12, 2013 by Al Jazeera

How Israel justifies the imminent relocation of thousands of Palestinian Bedouin by characterizing them as invaders.

On June 24th the “Prawer Plan for the Arrangement of Bedouin-Palestinian Settlement in the Negev” passed its first reading in the Israeli parliament. If implemented, the Plan will constitute “the largest single act of forced displacement of Arab citizens of Israel since the 1950s,” expelling an estimated forty thousand Palestinian Bedouin from their current dwellings.

The Plan’s ultimate objective is to Judaize the Israeli Negev. In order to do this, however, seventy thousand (out of 200,000) Bedouin who currently live in villages classified as ‘unrecognized’ by the Israeli government must be moved. 

The government already forbids them from connecting to the electricity grid or the water and sewage systems. Construction regulations are also harshly enforced, and in 2011 alone about a thousand Bedouin homes and animal pens—usually referred to by the government as mere “structures”—were demolished. There are no paved roads, and signposts from main roads to the villages are removed by government authorities. The villages are not shown on maps, since as a matter of official geography, the places inhabited by these second-class citizens of Israel do not exist.

Continue reading “Chuck Spinney: Israeli Genocide & Other Atrocities Against the Bedouin — Funded by the US Taxpayer!”

Posted on

Mini-Me: $75 Billion a Year, and US IC Still Cuts and Pastes Without Updating Years’ Old Information

Corruption, Government, Idiocy, Ineptitude, IO Impotency, Military
Who? Mini-Me?
Who? Mini-Me?

Huh?

US Intelligence Report a Cut-Paste on Chinese Missiles

College students can be flunked for cut-and-paste reports, think tankers can be embarrassed, Defense News staff writers can be fired, but not, apparently, members of the National Air and Space Intelligence Center (NASIC).

Most of its so-called “updated” report, 2013 Ballistic and Cruise Missile Threat, which contains contributions from the Defense Intelligence Agency Missile and Space Intelligence Center and the Office of Naval Intelligence, was largely a cut-and-paste job from its 2009 report. Some of the material is identical to the 2006 and 1998 report.

Though it was reformatted and photographs rearranged with some being enlarged or decreased, the 2013 report appears verbatim from the 2009 report. This clever reordering and reformatting with new color schemes for boxes and graphs is embarrassing since there is more impressive data on Chinese missiles on Wikipedia.

Continue reading “Mini-Me: $75 Billion a Year, and US IC Still Cuts and Pastes Without Updating Years' Old Information”

Posted on

Chuck Spinney: Insane Insider Threat Program in Context of Morally and Mentally Bankrupt US Intelligence System

07 Other Atrocities, 09 Justice, 10 Security, 11 Society, Corruption, Government, Idiocy, Ineptitude, IO Impotency, Military
Chuck Spinney
Chuck Spinney

Attached herewith is an essay I just wrote for Counterpunch.

For you convenience  I have also attached a very important McClatchy report on the Orwellian Insider Threat Program being promoted by the Obama Administration.

The lead co-author, Jonathan Landay, is one of the few mainstream reporters who has been onto the lunacy unleashed by 9-11 from the git go.

My intent in the essay is to place this dangerous craziness in a somewhat larger larger context of our morally and mentally bankrupt intelligence system … judge for yourself whether or not I have been successful.

WEEKEND EDITION
JULY 12-14, 2013
Signature Targeting Comes Home to Roost

by FRANKLIN C. SPINNEY, Counterpunch

Isla di Elba, Italia

At the core of the drone program is the theory of signature targeting.  It is a theory based on the idea that analysts can discern “enemy combatants” from an analysis of outward indicators of patterns of behaviour.

Continue reading “Chuck Spinney: Insane Insider Threat Program in Context of Morally and Mentally Bankrupt US Intelligence System”

Posted on

Berto Jongman: YouTube (48:52) Definitive Trial and Virtual Conviction of NSA

07 Other Atrocities, 10 Transnational Crime, Corruption, Government, Military
Berto Jongman
Berto Jongman

DEFCON 20: Bigger Monster, Weaker Chains: The National Security Agency and the Constitution”>DEFCON 20: Bigger Monster, Weaker Chains: The National Security Agency and the Constitution

Published on Nov 17, 2012

Speakers: JAMEEL JAFFER DEPUTY LEGAL DIRECTOR, AMERICAN CIVIL LIBERTIES UNION
WILLIAM BINNEY FORMER OFFICIAL, NATIONAL SECURITY AGENCY
JAMES BAMFORD INVESTIGATIVE JOURNALIST
ALEX ABDO STAFF ATTORNEY, AMERICAN CIVIL LIBERTIES UNION

The panel will be moderated by the Deputy Director of the ACLU, Jameel Jaffer.

The National Security Agency, the largest, most powerful spy agency in the world, has taken in an estimated 15 to 20 trillion communications since 9/11, often in defiance of the Constitution and Congressional statutes. The NSA’s goal, some say, is to collect virtually all of our electronic communications to allow mass data mining reminiscent of the notorious and now reportedly-defunct program, Total Information Awareness. The limits on the agency’s authority to sweep up and analyze this information are critical to our safety and our privacy. The NSA is investing vast amounts in increasing its data storage, code-breaking and analysis capabilities, frequently claiming the investments are for foreign intelligence or “cybersecurity” purposes. However, instead of keeping its equipment trained on terrorism suspects or foreign governments, the NSA is increasingly monitoring the communications of innocent people. Longtime NSA official and whistleblower Bill Binney will join investigative journalist and NSA expert James Bamford and ACLU lawyer Alex Abdo to explore the NSA’s goals, reach, and capabilities, and the legality (or illegality) of its actions.

For more information visit: http://bit.ly/defcon20_information
To download the video visit: http://bit.ly/defcon20_videos
Playlist DEFCON 20: http://bit.ly/defcon20_playlist

Posted on

Neal Rauhauser: Steele on NATO, AIPAC Replaces US IC — Steele Comments

Corruption, Ethics, Government, Military
Neal Rauhauser
Neal Rauhauser

Some months ago I had the great pleasure of adding OSINT godfather Robert David Steele as a LinkedIn contact. We’ve progressed from that to occasional phone calls and regular emails, pointing out interesting technology and events to each other.

NATO 4.0: Key Challenges AND Solutions was published with this short note, asking for broad consideration of the future of an OSINT agency, with NATO [and SOCOM] being a better home for it than the U.S. intelligence community.

Dear old friend or colleague,

I turn 61 this month — what an interesting 20 years it has been. Below is a post that I have thought about for some time.

I am quite certain that if General Breedlove and Admiral McRaven were to be properly briefed, that we could get the Open Source Agency and with it, funding for two Multinational Decision Support Centres as mentioned in the article.

As we all know I have no money, no power, and no influence — so I leave it to those of you who might wish to stir the pot, to make something of this little post of mine. I have in mind the southern tip of Italy, so we can sail up either coast.

Semper Fidelis,
Robert

I agree with Robert in that I think there will be an OSINT agency functionality as he described, but I disagree that such an animal will be monolithic, funded, or even sanctioned. Here is my reasoning.

Continue reading “Neal Rauhauser: Steele on NATO, AIPAC Replaces US IC — Steele Comments”

noble gold