Marcus Aurelius: Early Warning DoD Reductions in Force 6% to 50%

03 Economy, 07 Other Atrocities, 10 Security, 11 Society, Budgets & Funding, Commercial Intelligence, Corruption, DHS, DoD, Government, IO Impotency, Military, Office of Management and Budget
Marcus Aurelius

Starting to see initial indications that at least one part of DoD is gearing up to cut anywhere from 6% to 50% of its workforce within the fairly near term, perhaps beginning as soon as 01 Oct.  Drivers could be generic deficit reduction, sequestration, and historic limitations on strength levels in certain types of organizations.  Expect it to be ugly — sprung at last minute, execute without finesse.)

Government Workers Are Unfairly Assailed

By Ted Kaufman, US Senator (DE)

Wilmington (DE) News Journal
April 8, 2012

We've heard a lot in the past couple of years, pro and con, about escalating CEO compensation, but it seems to me at least one argument in their defense has merit. It is important to pay enough to recruit and retain the best talent available in the highly competitive global marketplace.

What seems strange to me is that those who believe this is true, that you have to pay well to attract the best talent, usually don't accept the same argument when it comes to government employees.

One of the more dangerous consequences of the financial crisis is how governments at all levels are, in effect, cutting off their noses to spite
their faces. In the rush to balance their budgets, some are indiscriminately firing, freezing and cutting pay, and cutting pensions — too often impacting the people who actually make government work.

Continue reading “Marcus Aurelius: Early Warning DoD Reductions in Force 6% to 50%”

Paul Craig Roberts: Washington Leads World Into Lawlessness

07 Other Atrocities, Corruption, Government, Law Enforcement, Military, Officers Call, Policies
Paul Craig Roberts

Washington Leads World Into Lawlessness

The US government pretends to live under the rule of law, to respect human rights, and to provide freedom and democracy to citizens. Washington’s pretense and the stark reality are diametrically opposed.

US government officials routinely criticize other governments for being undemocratic and for violating human rights. Yet, no other country except Israel sends bombs, missiles, and drones into sovereign countries to murder civilian populations. The torture prisons of Abu Gahraib, Guantanamo, and CIA secret rendition sites are the contributions of the Bush/Obama regimes to human rights.

Washington violates the human rights of its own citizens. Washington has suspended the civil liberties guaranteed in the US Constitution and declared its intention to detain US citizens indefinitely without due process of law. President Obama has announced that he, at his discretion, can murder US citizens whom he regards as a threat to the US.

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Mini-Me: Debunking Civil War Myths – About Control and Money, Not Freedom – Time for Secession Again, But From All Four Corners?

05 Civil War, 07 Other Atrocities, 11 Society, Civil Society, Cultural Intelligence, Government, History, IO Impotency, Military, Officers Call
Who? Mini-Me?

Huh?

Debunking Civil War Myths – Long Proven Wrong

The Victors Write the War History, but Should Their Lies be Immortal?

[Veterans Today Editors Note: I was 46 before I learned that Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation did not free a single slave  anywhere ….Jim W. Dean]

… by  Steve Scroggins

The most persistent and pernicious Big Lie regarding the so-called “Civil War”— more properly called the “War to Prevent Southern Independence”— is this:

Noble and saintly yankees fought the war to abolish slavery; evil Confederates fought to preserve it. 

The historical record incontrovertibly refutes this Big Lie and yet it lives on, repeated incessantly by many who know better, and by many, many more who accept without challenge what they were taught in government schools.

Continue reading “Mini-Me: Debunking Civil War Myths – About Control and Money, Not Freedom – Time for Secession Again, But From All Four Corners?”

Event: 28-29 Apr Washington DC International Drone Summit: Killing and Spying by Remote Control

07 Other Atrocities, 10 Security, 11 Society, DoD, Military, Peace Intelligence

Join us in Washington, DC on April 28 and 29 for an “International Drone Summit: Killing and Spying by Remote Control” hosted by CODEPINK, Reprieve, and the Center for Constitutional Rights.

US drone strikes have killed an estimated 3,000 people around the world, including hundreds of civilians, without any judicial process or meaningful oversight, and without any transparency or accountability. The summit's dual objectives are to better inform the public about the reality and significance of the US government's expanding use of both killer and surveillance drones, and to facilitate networks and strategies to resist this expansion.

The Saturday, April 28 program is open to the public and brings together human rights advocates, robotics technology experts, activists, lawyers, scholars and journalists, and shares the stories of people whose families and lives have been directly impacted by remote-controlled drone strikes. This is an all day event with multiple panels beginning at 9am at Mount Vernon Place United Methodist Church, 900 Massachusetts Ave. NW, Washington, DC. See this site for updates on the program, and register here today!

The Sunday, April 29 program is a strategy session for organizations and individuals to network and plan advocacy efforts focused on various aspects of drones, targeted killings and expanding US covert wars. If you are interested in attending this session, please email Ramah Kudaimi at rkudaimi(@ symbol)gmail.com.

Learn more.

Winston Wheeler: Lies, Damn Lies, & Panetta-Pentagon Criminal Insanity

Budgets & Funding, Corruption, DoD, Government, Military
Winslow Wheeler

Cost growth in the last year in DOD's acquisition system was $74 billion, 34 percent more than the $55 billion presumed to occur in the sequester in January; while the time frames are different (see discussion below), so much for Secretary of Defense Panetta's asinine rhetoric that sequester would be a “Doomsday.”

Analysis of two recent acquisition reports is available at Time's Battleland blog at http://battleland.blogs.time.com/2012/04/09/lies-damn-lies-and-pentagon-budget-numbers/

and below.

Cost growth in the last year in DOD's acquisition system was $74 billion, 34 percent more than the $55 billion presumed to occur in the sequester in January; while the time frames are different (see discussion below), so much for Secretary of Defense Analysis of two recent acquisition reports is available at Time's Battleland blog at http://battleland.blogs.time.com/2012/04/09/lies-damn-lies-and-pentagon-budget-numbers/ and below.

Lies, Damn Lies, and The Pentagon's Latest Budget Numbers

By Winslow Wheeler | April 9, 2012 | +
Leon Panetta in Drag

There's a pair of must-reads just out for anyone paying attention to the Pentagon's acquisition nightmare: one is a routinely scheduled, but important, report from the Defense Department; the other comes from one of the very few entities doing even minimal oversight of the Department of Defense these days, the Government Accountability Office.

Reviewing the reports separately results in a muddled picture of how the Pentagon buys its weapons. Happily, each report fills some of the data missing in the other. But, the two reports still leave some gaping holes, while providing a false impression of progress in the way the Defense Department buys weapons.

The two reports are GAO's annual review of major hardware acquisition, Defense Acquisitions: Assessments of Selected Weapon Programs, and DoD's new Selected Acquisition Report (SAR), both released March 30. What follows is my own After-Action Report – including the gaps, contradictions, and false assurances – after studying the data they do – and don't – contain.

The Death Spiral is Alive and Well

Continue reading “Winston Wheeler: Lies, Damn Lies, & Panetta-Pentagon Criminal Insanity”

Yoda: When Intelligence Loses It’s Integrity, It Is Not Intelligence

Commerce, Corruption, Government, IO Impotency, Military
Got Crowd? BE the Force!

Peak Intel: How So-Called Strategic Intelligence Actually Makes Us Dumber

An industry that once told hard truths to corporate and government clients now mostly just tells them what they want to hear, making it harder for us all to adapt to a changing world — and that's why I'm leaving it.

Eric Garland

The Atlantic, 5 April 2012

I recently quit my job as a “futurist” and “strategic intelligence analyst” after a successful 15-year career of writing books and consulting to corporations and governments around the world. I spent a decade and a half analyzing disruptive new technologies, predicting the effects of the Internet on the international construction industry, helping executives decide whether to spend billions in the nuclear power market, profiling the customer of the future — and training thousands of executives to do likewise for their own companies. It was exciting and fulfilling, but this is the end of the road.  My employment status is interesting to nobody except my wife and I, but why I am leaving the business of intelligence is important to everybody, because it stems from the endemic corruption of how decisions are made in our most critical institutions.

I am not quitting this industry for lack of passion, as I still believe — more than ever — in using good information and sophisticated analytical techniques to decode the future and make decisions. The problem is, the market for intelligence is now largely about providing information that makes decision makers feel better, rather than bringing true insights about risk and opportunity. Our future is now being planned by people who seem to put their emotional comfort ahead of making decisions based on real — and often uncomfortable — information. Perhaps one day, the discipline of real intelligence will return triumphantly to the world's executive suites. Until then, high-priced providers of “strategic intelligence” are only making it harder for their clients — for all of us — to adapt by shielding them from painful truths.

Continue reading “Yoda: When Intelligence Loses It's Integrity, It Is Not Intelligence”

Chuck Spinney: The Afghanistan Disaster Part II – The Long Hard Costly Exit

Corruption, Government, Military
Chuck Spinney
Given Nato's political problems with Pakistan, the Brits have elected to leave Afghanistan along the so-called Northern route to the Baltic Sea (see my 27 November posting, Afghan Dunkirk for discussion of the selection).  Now, as Bryan Brady and Jonathan Owen report in the Independent, the entirely predictable baksheesh game has begun.
Think of what the far larger, more logistics-intensive US forces might have pay to who ever guards our egress route.  Historians will recall that egress problem is not a one new for foreign invaders of Afghanistan.  Alexander the Great had to bribe a Pashtun tribe to clear guerrillas fighters( from another tribe) who were blocking his exit thru the Khyber Pass when he left Afghanistan to go to India. My guess — entirely speculative — is that they split the difference and had a good laugh after Alex departed — but we will never know.
Chuck Spinney

A dirty deal: Uzbek dictator ‘has UK over a barrel'

Karimov demands official visit in logistics deal over Britain's pull-out from Afghanistan

BRIAN BRADY plus.png , JONATHAN OWEN, Independent, SUNDAY 08 APRIL 2012

Britain is bargaining with one of the world's most brutal dictators because we need to use his country as a transit route to bring thousands of tons of military equipment home from Afghanistan.

Senior officials admitted yesterday that Uzbekistan's President Islam Karimov had the UK “over a barrel”, after his country emerged as the favoured route home when British forces are withdrawn from Afghanistan by 2014.

Continue reading “Chuck Spinney: The Afghanistan Disaster Part II – The Long Hard Costly Exit”