Communities of Practice – Page 664 – Public Intelligence Blog

Leverett Becomes Sixth City to Pass Anti-Drone Resolution

Leverett and Amherst, Mass., both were expected to consider resolutions. I haven't heard any news from Amherst.

The Leverett news is courtesy of Beth Adams.

I haven't seen official text, but here's some idea of what was passed, or at least what was considered for passage, in Leverett:

The Recorder:

Town meeting in Leverett will consider a resolution calling on the federal government to end the use of drones for assassinations on foreign soil and to enact regulations on the use of the unmanned aircraft in the United States.

It would ask U.S. Sens. Elizabeth Warren and Edward Markey and U.S. Rep. James McGovern to bring forward legislation “to end the practice of extrajudicial killing by armed drone aircraft” by withholding money for that purpose and “to make restitution for injuries, fatalities and environmental damage resulting from the actions of the United States government, the Department of Defense, the Central Intelligence Agency, allied nations and/or its private contractors.”

Continue reading “David Swanson: Localities Reining in Federal Government – Sixth City Passes Anti-Drone Resolution”

2014/05/072014/05/07

SchwartzReport: Justice Scalia’s Beautiful Mind

Cultural Intelligence, Government, Law Enforcement

There are two Justices that I think never should have been put on the Supreme Court, and whose behavior once on the court in my view constitutes unacceptable ideological hackery. This essay make the case on one of them.

Scalia’s Delusional Hackery: From ‘Originalism” to Shilling for the Tea Party
PAUL ROSENBERG – Salon

Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia made what UC Berkeley law professor Dan Farber called ‘a cringeworthy error” last week: he got the meaning of an opinion he cited exactly backward. Worse still – the opinion he misread was his own. As Farber explained:

Read full article.

2014/05/062014/05/06

Lee Camp: FCC Sells Out Internet & Public – Net Neutrality? We Don’t Need No Stinkin’ Net Neutrality

03 Economy, 04 Education, 07 Other Atrocities, 10 Transnational Crime, 11 Society, Commerce, Corruption, Cultural Intelligence, Government, Idiocy, IO Impotency, Offbeat Fun, Officers Call

In an FCC ruling last week, they completely decimated the idea of internet freedom or net neutrality. They basically said that the corporations that can pay more can get faster internet service – this opens the floodgates for corporate rule online.

2014/05/062014/05/06

Winslow Wheeler: Buck McKeon Sells Out the Troops and the A-10 — C/HASC Rolls Big Bucks Against Little People

04 Inter-State Conflict, 07 Other Atrocities, Corruption, Government, Idiocy, Military

Supporters of the A-10 “Warthog” close air support aircraft in Washington and US combat Soldiers and Marines who have seen, and are seeing, combat in Afghanistan were stunned Monday to read about a decision of the Chairman of the House Armed Services Committee, Congressman Buck McKeon (R-CA). He is joining with the Air Force and wants to retire all of these extraordinarily effective combat aircraft, sending them all to the boneyard at Davis-Monthan Air Force base, starting as soon as next year.

Ever since Chief of Staff of the Air Force (CSAF) Mark Welsh decided to get rid of all of 300-plus A-10s in the active and reserve Air Force and the Air National Guard, the media and congressional hearings have been stuffed with information from combat veterans, pilots and defense specialists about how spectacularly the A-10 has been performing in Afghanistan and all other recent US wars in Libya, Iraq and Kosovo–going as far back as Operation Desert Storm in 1991.

McKeon's A-10 sell-out comes in the form of a ruse. His draft legislation, to be moved Wednesday (May 7) at the mark-up of the House Armed Services Committee of its FY 2015 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), creates a distinction without a difference with CSAF Welsh's retirement plan. McKeon's own description of his handiwork says he “would limit funds . to retire A-10 aircraft unless each such retired aircraft is maintained in type-1000 storage [which]. means storage of a retired aircraft in a near-flyaway condition that allows for the aircraft to be recalled into use by the Regular or Reserve Components of the Department of the Air Force.” Falling for the ruse either foolishly or knowingly, some media describe the language as “something of a compromise” or emphasize the “near fly-away” condition of the A-10 fleet after it is sent to the boneyard at Davis-Monthan. However, a simple check of what “type-1000 storage” means reveals that the aircraft will be made un-flyable and sealed in two layers of latex, which can be removed and the aircraft made operable only after considerable effort.

Continue reading “Winslow Wheeler: Buck McKeon Sells Out the Troops and the A-10 — C/HASC Rolls Big Bucks Against Little People”

2014/05/062014/05/07

Mini-Me: US Army DCGS-A Failures — and Palantir Keeps Trying to Over-Sell Its Shallow Pit

Commerce, Corruption, Government, Ineptitude, IO Deeds of War, IO Impotency, Military

Huh?

Internal Army Report’s Damning Conclusion on a System Meant to Protect Our Troops

Editor’s Note: This is the third part in an investigative series by TheBlaze into how top Army officials failed to provide necessary technology to troops on the battlefield, choosing to promote their own flawed software instead. Read part one and part two here.

In January, members of the 82nd Airborne Division’s 1st Brigade Combat Team trained to track enemy combatants and bombs were inputing data into a $4 billion software system developed by the Army.

ADVANCE EXTRACT: A total of 60 companies were involved in the Army’s DCGS-A program. The four largest were defense weapons developers, Northrop Grumman, General Dynamic, Raytheon and Lockheed Martin. “They have no play in the global commercial IT market, no standing at all,” said an IT specialist who works with both the government and private sector and is familiar with Defense programs. The specialist spoke on condition of anonymity out of fear of retribution. “The cost to the taxpayer is extraordinary for products that already exist.”

The software was intended to give military analysts the life-saving tools they needed to be one step ahead of the enemy.

Instead, it shut down, losing all of the valuable data the unit members had uploaded, according to an after-action report obtained exclusively by TheBlaze.

Continue reading “Mini-Me: US Army DCGS-A Failures — and Palantir Keeps Trying to Over-Sell Its Shallow Pit”

2014/05/062014/05/06

Jean Lievens: A Publisher Tries to Privatize Marx & Engels — Public Backlash

Commerce, Idiocy

It's madness to ‘privatise' Marx – thanks to Piketty he's back in vogue

Austerity and the financial crisis mean economics is in the news, so why is a publisher taking Marx and Engels offline?

The global economic and financial crisis has led to a renewal of interest in Karl Marx. Only a few weeks ago the New York Times ran a forum with leading economists with the theme “Was Marx right?“. Thomas Piketty's recent book, Capital in the 21st Century, conducts an implicit dialogue with Marx over how to understand capitalism and confront its contradictions. So it is very sad that at this moment the publisher Lawrence & Wishart is forcing the Marxists Internet Archive (MIA) to take down those parts of Marx's and Friedrich Engels' Collected Works that it had hosted on its website with the authorisation of the publisher. It is particularly unfortunate that it insisted this happen by the eve of May Day, when international working-class solidarity is celebrated worldwide.

Read full article.

2014/05/062014/05/06

SchwartzReport: Tennessee First State to Jail Women for Pregnancy Outcomes

06 Family, 07 Health, 07 Other Atrocities, Cultural Intelligence, Government, Idiocy

This is extraordinary legislation, and the latest in the Theocratic Right's war on women. If I were a fertile woman I am not sure I would live in Tennessee now that this is the law. This is what the world would look like if the Theocratic Right had its way.

It's Official: Tennessee Becomes First State to Jail Women for Pregnancy Outcomes
KATIE MCDONOUGH, Assistant Editor – AlterNet (U.S.)

Tennessee has become the first state in the nation to pass a law criminalizing women for their pregnancy outcomes. Republican Gov. Bill Haslam took the 10 days allotted to him to consider the advice of doctors, addiction experts and reproductive health groups urging him to veto the punitive and dangerous measure that allows prosecutors to charge a woman with criminal assault if she uses illegal drugs during her pregnancy and her fetus or newborn is considered harmed as a result. Haslam ignored these recommendations – and the recommendations of nearly every major medical association, including the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy – and signed the measure anyway.