Corruption – Page 526 – Public Intelligence Blog

Following from Defense One, a relatively new newsletter. I'm not a political scientist, but much of what's said below seems reasonable to me. I would tell you that the current situation clearly tells us that our Constitutional republic has failed, probably irrevocably so and that we need a lawful Constitutional convention in order to rebuild the country and our Constitution from the ground up, line by line, issue by issue.

The Beginning of the End for Washington

By Ron Fournier

October 1, 2013

Step back. Try for a moment to extrapolate what a government shutdown and discredited U.S. currency could do to the economy and the public's faith in government. Think beyond next year's congressional elections or even the 2016 presidential race. Factor in existing demographic and social trends. I did, and this is what I concluded:

1. The Republican Party is marginalizing itself to the brink of extinction.

2. President Obama can't capitulate to GOP demands to unwind the fairly legislated and litigated Affordable Care Act. To do so would be political malpractice and a poor precedent for future presidents.

3. Despite the prior two points, Obama and his party won't escape voters' wrath. Democrats are less at fault but not blameless.

4. This may be the beginning of the end of Washington as we know it. A rising generation of pragmatic, non-ideological voters is appalled by the dysfunctional leadership of their parents and grandparents. History may consider October 2013 their breaking point. There will come a time when Millennials aren't just mad as hell; they won't take it anymore.

Continue reading “Marcus Aurelius: The Beginning of the End for Washington”

2013/09/302013/09/30

Penguin: Book Review by Andrew Bacevich — Thank You For Your Service [The Unraveling]

07 Health, 11 Society, Civil Society, Corruption, Cultural Intelligence, Director of National Intelligence et al (IC), DoD, Government, Idiocy, Ineptitude, IO Deeds of War, Military, Officers Call, Peace Intelligence, Threats

Book review: ‘Thank You for Your Service’ by David Finkel

By Andrew Bacevich

Andrew J. Bacevich teaches at Boston University. His new book is “Breach of Trust: How Americans Failed Their Soldiers and Their Country.”

Nominally a sequel to The Good Soldiers, his 2009 account of an American infantry battalion at war in Iraq, David Finkel’s new book actually serves as a perfect companion to George Packer’s recent bestseller, The Unwinding. Like Packer, Finkel examines the human detritus left in the wake of fraudulent promises and collapsed illusions. In The Unwinding, Packer contemplates the fate of those victimized by cataclysmic economic change. In Thank You for Your Service, Finkel looks at those victimized by egregious military malpractice.

The post-industrial, high-tech, information-age economy unveiled near the end of the 20th century supposedly offered a template for permanent prosperity. The Great Recession upended such expectations. Although some Americans have gotten very rich indeed, far larger numbers of ordinary citizens find themselves unemployed and unemployable. With impressive sensitivity, Packer tells their story.

Concocted at about the same time, a post-industrial, high-tech, information-age approach to waging war supposedly offered a template for assured victory. Iraq and Afghanistan have shredded such pretensions. Although some high-ranking military and civilian officials found ways to cash in, far larger numbers of ordinary soldiers (and their families) suffered, many of them grievously. In painful, intimate and at times almost voyeuristic detail, Finkel tells their story.

More specifically, Finkel, a reporter with The Washington Post, attends to what he calls the “after war.” His concern is with the soldiers who return from the war zone bearing wounds — and with the loved ones on whom those wounds also become imprinted. Above all, he is concerned with wounds that may not be fully visible: the post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), traumatic brain injury and related conditions that affect roughly a half-million younger veterans. Make that a half-million and counting.

To translate this disturbing statistic into flesh and blood, Finkel checks in on some of the soldiers featured in his previous book. What he finds is anger, anxiety, shame, depression, guilt, sleeplessness, self-abuse, spousal abuse, child abuse, alcohol abuse, drug abuse and suicidal tendencies, sometimes acted on, sometimes not. Shouting matches, crying jags and bizarre behavior along with guns and two-pack-a-day smoking habits abound, but not much in the way of useful therapy. Of one soldier, Finkel writes: “He began to take sleeping pills to fall asleep and another kind of pill to get back to sleep when he woke up. He took other pills, too, some for pain, others for anxiety. He began to drink so much vodka that his skin smelled of it, and then he started mentioning suicide.”

Continue reading “Penguin: Book Review by Andrew Bacevich — Thank You For Your Service [The Unraveling]”

2013/09/30

Penguin: VA Pushing Pills and Getting Vets Hooked on Opiates

04 Inter-State Conflict, 07 Health, 07 Other Atrocities, 11 Society, Corruption, Government, Idiocy, Ineptitude, Military, Officers Call

VA Pushing Pills and Getting Vets Hooked on Opiates

The VA is prescribing 270 percent more opiates to veterans than it was 12 years ago, sometimes pushing the drugs to known addicts who later overdose, writes Aaron Glantz.

This story aired on Reveal, a new public radio show from The Center for Investigative Reporting and PRX.

Before dawn, a government van picked up paratrooper Jeffrey Waggoner for the five-hour drive to a Department of Veterans Affairs hospital in southern Oregon. His orders: detox from a brutal addiction to painkillers.

He had only the clothes on his back, his watch, an MP3 player, and a two-page pain contract the army made him sign, a promise to get clean.

But instead of keeping Waggoner away from his vice, medical records show the VA hospital in Roseburg kept him so doped up that he could barely stay awake. Then, inexplicably, the VA released him for the weekend with a cocktail of 19 prescription medications, including 12 tablets of highly addictive oxycodone.

Three hours later, Waggoner, 32, was dead of a drug overdose, slumped in a heap in front of his room at the Sleep Inn motel.

Continue reading “Penguin: VA Pushing Pills and Getting Vets Hooked on Opiates”

2013/09/302013/09/30

4th Media: EXPOSED – Thai “Independent” Newspaper Funded by US Government [Good Intentions, Rotten Incoherent Conops]

Corruption, Government, IO Deeds of War, IO Impotency, Media

EXPOSED: Indy “Newspaper” Funded by US Government

Deep network uncovered as fake “indy” rag is forced to disclose funding.

Note: A copy of Prachatai’s recent disclosure can be found here.

Editor’s Addition: A conflict of interest occurs “when an individual or organization is involved in multiple interests, one of which could possibly corrupt the motivation for an act in the other.” Prachatai, in their own disclosure admits that such a conflict of interest indeed does exist, one they address by simply “giving us their word” their motivations are not corrupted.

This is before we even consider the extent to which Prachatai supports the talking points, agenda, and websites of other Soros-funded globalist organizations, like Amnesty International (page 10), Global Voices, and Human Rights Watch which end up as posts and/or saturate Prachatai’s “links” column.

Bangkok, Thailand August 11, 2011 – After initially trying to downplay, obfuscate, and deny accusations that the Thai “independent, non-profit, daily web newspaper” Prachatai was in fact a US-funded propaganda front, a series of reports from Land Destroyer provided irrefutable evidence taken directly from the US government-funded National Endowment for Democracy website.

Additional backpedaling, lying, and obfuscating prompted a follow-up report on Prachatai featuring several unlisted funding sources the duplicitous organization most likely thought were well buried.

Please click here for the video: http://landdestroyer.blogspot.jp/2011/08/exposed-indy-newspaper-funded-by-us.html

Video: Noam Chomsky in 1993 on the NED’s projects in Nicaragua: “It’s about what you would expect from a bipartisan democracy campaign – it’s an attempt to impose what is called democracy, meaning rule by the rich and the powerful, without interference by the mob but within the framework of formal electoral procedures.”

….

Perhaps fearing a third onslaught, or in a desperate attempt to salvage its sagging legitimacy, just this week Prachatai has made a seemingly complete disclosure of their US government and US corporate foundation funding laying to rest its own supporter’s erroneous assumptions and defense that the organization was “just barely getting by.”

In fact, they are doing quite well and receive millions of baht consistently year to year from the US National Endowment for Democracy, George Soros’ Open Society Institute, and more recently USAID.

Continue reading “4th Media: EXPOSED – Thai “Independent” Newspaper Funded by US Government [Good Intentions, Rotten Incoherent Conops]”

2013/09/292013/09/29

Kevin Barrett: Saudis Threaten Russian Olympics, Israeli False Flag in Syria, US Spins Round and Round

03 Environmental Degradation, 04 Inter-State Conflict, 07 Other Atrocities, 08 Proliferation, 09 Terrorism, 10 Transnational Crime, Corruption, Cultural Intelligence, Government, Idiocy, IO Deeds of War

Phi Beta Iota: We have no direct knowledge. The growth of credible voices denouncing the “official” story on Syria as a web of lies is noteworthy. As best we can tell, the 900 lb gorilla is now captive to financial and religious forces few comprehend, while the BRICS are emergent as the alternative world order, with a third amorphous autonomous Internet and non-state network of networks in gestation. Earth will survive humanity — whether humanity will survive its own arrogance and ignorance remains an open question.

US/Al-Qaeda threatened Olympics through Saudi proxy

Voice of Russia (listen to the interview)

Lawrence Wilkerson, former chief of staff to Colin Powell, stepped forward regarding the Syrian chemical weapons attack and said: “This was an Israeli false flag.”

He cited his intelligence sources as saying that it was actually the Israelis that killed all those people with gas.

He was just one of many people going “way off script” in the US regarding the heinous attack.

Dr. Kevin Barrett in an exclusive interview with the Voice of Russia was very candid when he said it was stunning that someone like Saudi Prince Bandar would come to Putin and threaten to bomb the Winter Olympics and claim that he was acting with the full support of the US Government.

According to Dr. Barrett the US government, threatening to bomb the Olympic Games with Al-Qaeda, through its Saudi proxy, turns the whole “War on Terror Paradigm” on its head.

Continue reading “Kevin Barrett: Saudis Threaten Russian Olympics, Israeli False Flag in Syria, US Spins Round and Round”

2013/09/292013/09/29

Marcus Aurelius: N.S.A. Gathers Data On Social Connections Of U.S. Citizens

Corruption, Government, Idiocy, Military

New York Times
September 29, 2013
Pg. 1

N.S.A. Gathers Data On Social Connections Of U.S. Citizens

By James Risen and Laura Poitras

WASHINGTON — Since 2010, the National Security Agency has been exploiting its huge collections of data to create sophisticated graphs of some Americans’ social connections that can identify their associates, their locations at certain times, their traveling companions and other personal information, according to newly disclosed documents and interviews with officials.

The spy agency began allowing the analysis of phone call and e-mail logs in November 2010 to examine Americans’ networks of associations for foreign intelligence purposes after N.S.A. officials lifted restrictions on the practice, according to documents provided by Edward J. Snowden, the former N.S.A. contractor.

The policy shift was intended to help the agency “discover and track” connections between intelligence targets overseas and people in the United States, according to an N.S.A. memorandum from January 2011. The agency was authorized to conduct “large-scale graph analysis on very large sets of communications metadata without having to check foreignness” of every e-mail address, phone number or other identifier, the document said. Because of concerns about infringing on the privacy of American citizens, the computer analysis of such data had previously been permitted only for foreigners.

Continue reading “Marcus Aurelius: N.S.A. Gathers Data On Social Connections Of U.S. Citizens”

2013/09/292013/09/29

Marcus Aurelius: NSA’s Creeping Cloud

Corruption, Government, Idiocy, Military

New York Times
September 29, 2013
Pg. SR11

Creeping Cloud

By Maureen Dowd

BLUFFDALE, Utah — AT the Husband and Wife lingerie store here in Mormon country — where babies are welcome amid the sex toys and the motto is “Classy, tasteful and comfortable” — no one had heard of it.

At the Allami smoke shop across the street, adjacent to a hypnosis center that can help you stop smoking, they were disturbed by it. Down the road at Quiznos, the young man making subs went on a rant about his insular community’s compliance with the government’s intrusions into Americans’ private lives.

Indeed, this valley of subdivisions, sagebrush and one of the remaining polygamous sects gets more exercised about the letter “c” — there’s a Kapuccino cafe, a Maverik convenience store and a Pikasso print shop — than they do about the National Security Agency’s secretive new $2 billion, one- million-square-foot data death star.

As Mark Reid, Bluffdale’s city manager, told The Times’s Michael Schmidt, the community’s initial excitement about new jobs faded because many of the data analysts are elsewhere. The good jobs, he says, are for security dogs who have a “plush” kennel.

“They don’t interact with anybody, they don’t let anybody come up there,” he said: “It is like they are not there. It is not like they are I.B.M. and they join us for town days and sponsor a booth.”

At a hearing of the Senate Intelligence Committee in Washington on Thursday, Democratic Senator Mark Udall of Colorado tried to pin down the shadowy and largely unchecked Emperor Alexander, as the N.S.A. head, Gen. Keith Alexander, is known, on whether his agency is indiscriminately Hoovering Americans’ phone records.

“I believe it is in the nation’s best interest to put all the phone records into a lockbox that we could search when the nation needs to do it, yes,” Alexander said.

When Alexander was asked a year ago if the Bluffdale center would hold the data of Americans, he replied no: “We don’t hold data on U.S. citizens,” adding that reports that they would “grab all the e-mails” were “grossly misreported.”

Democratic Senator Ron Wyden of Oregon told me ruefully that on Thursday, “Alexander put in a lockbox information that he’s told the public he doesn’t have. This is what we’re dealing with.

Continue reading “Marcus Aurelius: NSA's Creeping Cloud”