Communities of Practice – Page 1055 – Public Intelligence Blog

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Experts: DoD could slash 150K jobs

Sean Reilly

Federal Times, 4 December 2011

A reduction in force. More base closings and consolidations. Big cuts to defense intelligence agencies.

All those options affecting the Defense Department's vast civilian workforce would be on the table if automatic across-the-board budget cuts go forward, experts predicted last week.

That workforce, the largest of any federal agency, totals about 790,000, according to the most recent DoD figures. During the next decade, its size could tumble 20 percent to about 630,000, the smallest since the Defense Department's creation in 1947, under a scenario outlined last month by Defense Secretary Leon Panetta in a letter to Congress. The Army, Navy and Air Force employ almost 80 percent of the existing civilian workforce; DoD organizations and the National Guard account for the rest.

DefDog: War with Iran? Opening Pandora’s Box!

02 Diplomacy, 04 Inter-State Conflict, 07 Other Atrocities, 10 Security, Corruption, Government, IO Deeds of War, Military, Peace Intelligence, Power Behind-the-Scenes/Special Interests

Has the War with Iran Already Begun?

The evidence of an extensive Western covert program against Tehran, and Iranian retaliation, is now too obvious to ignore

Michael Hirsh

National Journal, 4 December 2011

Two incidents that occurred on Sunday—Iran’s claim of a shoot-down of a U.S. drone, and an explosion outside the British embassy in Bahrain—may have been unrelated. But they appear to add to growing evidence that an escalating covert war by the West is under way against Iran, and that Tehran is retaliating with greater intensity than ever.

Asked whether the United States, in cooperation with Israel, was now engaged in a covert war against Iran’s nuclear program that may include the Stuxnet virus, the blowing-up of facilities and the assassination or kidnapping of scientists, one recently retired U.S. official privy to up-to-date intelligence would not deny it.

Read full article.

2011/12/062011/12/06

John Steiner: US Chamber of Commerce – Kill It?

01 Poverty, 03 Economy, 07 Other Atrocities, 09 Justice, 11 Society, Blog Wisdom, Budgets & Funding, Commerce, Corporations, Corruption, Counter-Oppression/Counter-Dictatorship Practices, Misinformation & Propaganda, Money, Banks & Concentrated Wealth, Non-Governmental, Politics of Science & Science of Politics, Power Behind-the-Scenes/Special Interests

Click here to sign your name:
“Google, stand up for democracy and your users—quit the U.S. Chamber of Commerce!”

Dear MoveOn member,

Right now we have a huge opportunity to deal what's being called a “serious blow to one of Washington's most powerful lobbies.”1

The U.S. Chamber of Commerce is an army of lobbyists for hire by mega-corporations like banks and those in the fossil fuel industry. In 2009, it spent more corporate money on lobbying than the next five biggest spenders combined.2 And 93% of its campaign spending goes to support Republicans and attack Democrats.3

Google is a paying member of the Chamber, which means that part of the money they make from Google users—ordinary people like us using Gmail, Google search, and other Google products—goes into the Chamber's pockets to fight for Wall Street and Big Oil. But the Washington Post and Politico recently reported that at Google headquarters, employees are intensely debating whether Google should quit the Chamber in the next few weeks.4

Continue reading “John Steiner: US Chamber of Commerce – Kill It?”

2011/12/05

Steve Denning: Itemization of How We Blew Up the World

03 Economy, 07 Other Atrocities, 09 Justice, 10 Security, Analysis, Blog Wisdom, Commerce, Commercial Intelligence, Corporations, Corruption, Misinformation & Propaganda, Money, Banks & Concentrated Wealth, Policy, Power Behind-the-Scenes/Special Interests, Secrecy & Politics of Secrecy

Lest We Forget: Why We Had A Financial Crisis

Steve Denning

Forbes, 22 November 2011

When a true genius appears in the world you may know him by this infallible sign, that the dunces are all in confederacy against him.

Jonathan Swift

It is clear to anyone who has studied the financial crisis of 2008 that the private sector’s drive for short-term profit was behind it. More than 84 percent of the sub-prime mortgages in 2006 were issued by private lending. These private firms made nearly 83 percent of the subprime loans to low- and moderate-income borrowers that year. Out of the top 25 subprime lenders in 2006, only one was subject to the usual mortgage laws and regulations. The nonbank underwriters made more than 12 million subprime mortgages with a value of nearly $2 trillion. The lenders who made these were exempt from federal regulations.

How then could the Mayor of New York, Michael Bloomberg say the following at a business breakfast in mid-town Manhattan on November 1, 2011?

It was not the banks that created the mortgage crisis. It was, plain and simple, Congress who forced everybody to go and give mortgages to people who were on the cusp. Now, I’m not saying I’m sure that was terrible policy, because a lot of those people who got homes still have them and they wouldn’t have gotten them without that. But they were the ones who pushed Fannie and Freddie to make a bunch of loans that were imprudent, if you will. They were the ones that pushed the banks to loan to everybody. And now we want to go vilify the banks because it’s one target, it’s easy to blame them and Congress certainly isn’t going to blame themselves.”

Barry Ritholtz in the Washington Post calls the notion that the US Congress was behind the financial crisis of 2008 “the Big Lie”. As we have seen in other contexts, if a lie is big enough, people begin to believe it.

Full Story Below the Line with BLOCKBUSTER Itemization

Continue reading “Steve Denning: Itemization of How We Blew Up the World”

2011/12/05

Joichi Ito: Internet is an Open-Source Philosophy

Advanced Cyber/IO, Civil Society, Collective Intelligence, Cultural Intelligence, Ethics, Hacking, Methods & Process

In an Open-Source Society, Innovating by the Seat of Our Pants

JOICHI ITO

New York Times, December 5, 2011

The Internet isn’t really a technology. It’s a belief system, a philosophy about the effectiveness of decentralized, bottom-up innovation. And it’s a philosophy that has begun to change how we think about creativity itself.

. . . . . .

The ethos of the Internet is that everyone should have the freedom to connect, to innovate, to program, without asking permission. No one can know the whole of the network, and by design it cannot be centrally controlled. This network was intended to be decentralized, its assets widely distributed. Today most innovation springs from small groups at its “edges.”

. . . . . . .

I don’t think education is about centralized instruction anymore; rather, it is the process establishing oneself as a node in a broad network of distributed creativity.

Read full article.

2011/12/05

Mini-Me: US Gasoline Exports–Reason for Tar Sands Fraud

03 Economy, 03 Environmental Degradation, 05 Energy, 07 Other Atrocities, 11 Society, Civil Society, Commerce, Corruption, Earth Intelligence, Government, Power Behind-the-Scenes/Special Interests

Gasoline: The new big U.S. export

Steve Hargreaves

CNN Money, 5 December 2011

NEW YORK (CNNMoney) — The United States is awash in gasoline. So much so, in fact, that the country is exporting a record amount of it.

The country exported 430,000 more barrels of gasoline a day than it imported in September, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration. That is about twice the amount at the start of the year, and experts and industry insiders say the trend is here to stay.

The United States began exporting gas in late 2008. For decades prior, starting in 1960, the country used all the gas it produced here plus had to import gas from places in Europe.

But demand for gas has dropped nearly 10% in recent years. It went from a peak of 9.6 million barrels a day in 2007 to 8.8 million barrels today, according to the EIA.

Read full article.

Phi Beta Iota: The entire Tar Sands scheme is a scam on the US public, and atrocity against the Canadian public. In Canada, they are proposing to use precious water they do not have to spare, to flush tar we do not need out of the sands; in the US, there is no need for the tar sands as the sleazy campaigns suggest, the oil companies want the tar sands so they can externalize the costs to the US public and privatize the profits of exporting the gasoline.

2011/12/052011/12/05

Josh Kilbourn: 46 Million Americans on Foodstamps

01 Poverty, 03 Economy, 09 Justice, 11 Society, Civil Society, Commerce, Corruption, Government

Over 46 Million Americans On Foodstamps For The First Time Ever

Tyler Durden

Zerohedge.com, 12/05/2011

While the capital markets may be cheering that in the past month 120,000 people supposedly found jobs, even if these were largely temporary or part-time just in time for the year end shopping sprees, we wonder how they will react when learning that according to the latest update from the Supplemental Nutrition

Assistance Program (SNAP), some 423,000 Americans found their way to minimum way subsistence, courtesy of Food Stamp handouts from Uncle Sam. Since the start of the Second Great Depression, food stamp participation has increased by 18.7 million, and is now at an all time higher 46.3 million. All Bush's fault, or something. At least the chart below appears to be plateauing… Actually, sorry, no isn't.

US Food Stamp Usage Hits New Record

6M young U.S. adults live with their parents

Cost of federal unemployment benefits so far: $434 billion

Category: Communities of Practice

Marcus Aurelius: Experts: DoD Could Slash 150K Jobs

DefDog: War with Iran? Opening Pandora’s Box!

John Steiner: US Chamber of Commerce – Kill It?

Steve Denning: Itemization of How We Blew Up the World

Joichi Ito: Internet is an Open-Source Philosophy

Mini-Me: US Gasoline Exports–Reason for Tar Sands Fraud

Josh Kilbourn: 46 Million Americans on Foodstamps