Corruption – Page 633 – Public Intelligence Blog

2012/12/152012/12/15

SchwartzReport: Poisoning the Well – Federal Collusion with Industry to Pollute Natio’s Underground Water Supply

Corruption, Earth Intelligence, Government, Idiocy, Ineptitude

Injection Wells: The Hidden Risks of Pumping Waste Underground

Poisoning the Well: How the Feds Let Industry Pollute the Nation’s Underground Water Supply

Federal officials have given energy and mining companies permission to pollute aquifers in more than 1,500 places across the country, releasing toxic material into underground reservoirs that help supply more than half of the nation's drinking water.

In many cases, the Environmental Protection Agency has granted these so-called aquifer exemptions in Western states now stricken by drought and increasingly desperate for water.

EPA records show that portions of at least 100 drinking water aquifers have been written off because exemptions have allowed them to be used as dumping grounds.

“You are sacrificing these aquifers,” said Mark Williams, a hydrologist at the University of Colorado and a member of a National Science Foundation team studying the effects of energy development on the environment. “By definition, you are putting pollution into them. … If you are looking 50 to 100 years down the road, this is not a good way to go.”

As part of an investigation into the threat to water supplies from underground injection of waste, ProPublica set out to identify which aquifers have been polluted.

Read full article.

Phi Beta Iota: The ignorance of the US National Intelligence Council in endorsing fracking as a path to energy is breathtaking. $70 billion a year plus, and the National Intelligence Council has no idea that fracking causes earthquakes and contaminates scarce groundwater?

2012 Global Trends 2030: Review by Robert Steele — Report Lauds Fracking as Energy Solution, Disappoints on Multiple Fronts

Sir Richard Branson: Breaking the Taboo — Ending the War on People also known as the War on People

2012/12/14

Eagle: US and the ITU Treaty — Competing Truths

Autonomous Internet, Civil Society, Corruption, Ethics, Government

300 Million Talons... — 300 Million Talons…

The US claims it does not want to allow foreign intrusion into multi-stakeholder business, including the regulation of spam. The rest of the world sees the US as ignorant and arrogant, insisting on the rights of its telecommunications stakeholders as opposed to the rights of its own public and the public in the rest of the world.

U.S. announces will not sign ITU treaty, period

Summary: The U.S. has just announced that, “U.S. cannot sign revised telecommunications regulations in their current form.”

US and UK refuse to sign UN's communications treaty

The US, Canada, Australia and UK have refused to sign an international communications treaty at an conference in Dubai.

Phi Beta Iota: The US is being duplicitous here. What is really going on is that the telecommunications providers are using their illicit power over the US Government to block any democratization and coincident draconian reduction in cost of goods and services associated with the Internet. The real solution lies in Panarchy, in an Autonomous Internet that leverages Open Source Everything — the kind of thing we have proposed that Sir Richard Branson take the lead on with The Virgin Truth. The rest of the world is not stupid — the US position is not just unsustainable, it will lead, as its SWIFT sanctions against Iran led, to the rest of the world routing around the USA and ignoring the US Government. The era of imperial mandate is over. The US will be the last to read the memo.

2012/12/102012/12/11

Steven Aftergood: Senate Slams Door on Defense Clandestine Service — Robert Steele Comments + DoD Clandestine RECAP

Advanced Cyber/IO, Corruption, Government, Ineptitude, Military

Updated 11 Dec 2012 to add Graphic: Intelligence Requirements, Collection, Evaluation, and Capabilities Building

Senate Puts Brakes on Defense Clandestine Service

The Senate moved last week to restrain the rapid growth of the Defense Clandestine Service, the Pentagon’s human intelligence operation.

Under a provision of the FY2013 defense authorization act that was approved on December 4, the Pentagon would be prohibited from hiring any more spies than it had as of last April, and it would have to provide detailed cost estimates and program plans in forthcoming reports to Congress.

“DoD needs to demonstrate that it can improve the management of clandestine HUMINT before undertaking any further expansion,” the Senate Armed Services Committee wrote in a report on the new legislation.

Longstanding problems with defense human intelligence cited by the Committee include: “inefficient utilization of personnel trained at significant expense to conduct clandestine HUMINT; poor or non-existent career management for trained HUMINT personnel; cover challenges; and unproductive deployment locations.”

The Committee noted further that “President Bush authorized 50 percent growth in the CIA’s case officer workforce, which followed significant growth under President Clinton. Since 9/11, DOD’s case officer ranks have grown substantially as well. The committee is concerned that, despite this expansion and the winding down of two overseas conflicts that required large HUMINT resources, DOD believes that its needs are not being met.”

Instead of an ambitious expansion, a tailored reduction in defense intelligence spending might be more appropriate, the Committee said.

“If DOD is able to utilize existing resources much more effectively, the case could be made that investment in this area could decline, rather than remain steady or grow, to assist the Department in managing its fiscal and personnel challenges,” the Senate Committee wrote.

The Washington Post published a revealing account of Pentagon plans to expand the size and reach of the defense human intelligence program in “DIA sending hundreds more spies overseas” by Greg Miller, December 1.

Along with overhead surveillance, bolstering human intelligence has been the focus of one of two major defense intelligence initiatives, said Under Secretary of Defense (Intelligence) Michael G. Vickers last October. The Defense Clandestine Service “enable[s] us to be more effective in the collection of national-level clandestine human intelligence across a range of targets of paramount interest to the Department of Defense,” he said.

The latest issues of the U.S. Army’s Military Intelligence Professional Bulletin, released under the Freedom of Information Act, are available here (in some very large pdf files).

“A Short History of Army Intelligence” by Michael E. Bigelow of US Army Intelligence and Security Command, dated July 2012, is available here.

Newly updated doctrine from the Joint Chiefs of Staff includes Information Operations, JP 3-13, 27 November 2012, and Joint Forcible Entry Operations, JP 3-18, 27 November 2012.

Continue reading “Steven Aftergood: Senate Slams Door on Defense Clandestine Service — Robert Steele Comments + DoD Clandestine RECAP”

2012/12/082012/12/08

Penguin: Larry WIlkerson Skeptical About Politicization (aka Fabrication) of Syrian Chemical Weapons Reports

Corruption, Government, Media, Military

Former Powell adviser ‘skeptical’ of ‘politicized’ US intelligence on Syria

RT, 08 December, 2012

Syria will never use chemical weapons against its own people, Lawrence Wilkerson, a retired US Army Colonel who was Chief of Staff to Colin Powell told RT. Instead, the reality is that US is “preparing the ground to intervene in Syria.”

An act which would lead to a conflict “that would take at least a decade to settle – and there aren't going to be too many victors at the end of that decade, just losers,” Wilkerson says, as Washington's ultimate aim is to overthrow the Iranian leadership.

Simultaneously, some members of Congress are talking about “impeachment” of the US president for not consulting Congress before involving the country in conflicts.

RT: You were Colin Powell's chief of staff when the decision was made to invade Iraq. In 2003, Powell made a speech that laid out the case for that war. Let's take a listen to what he said. You helped prepare that speech, and have since described it as the biggest mistake of your life. Why?

wilkerson-staff-secretary-colin.n — Lawrence Wilkerson, former chief of staff to Secretary of State Colin Powell (AFP Photo / Chip Somodevilla)

Lawrence Wilkerson: Primarily because we – to the American people, to the international community and of course to the members of the US Security Council – presented that speech… it was not accurate, it was not true, it was not valid. We did not know that, but it was not just an intelligence failure. It was also the massive politicization of intelligence by the leadership in Washington.

RT: We're currently seeing very similar rhetoric in the US in relation to Syria. Will it end in war again?

LW: I would be highly skeptical of any of the intelligence rendered by the $140-billion-plus US intelligence community as to weapons of mass destruction in possession of another country. Period.

Read full article.

Continue reading “Penguin: Larry WIlkerson Skeptical About Politicization (aka Fabrication) of Syrian Chemical Weapons Reports”

2012/12/072012/12/07

Dolphin: Autism Up, Sperm Down

07 Health, Commerce, Corruption, Earth Intelligence, Government, Idiocy

Connecting the dots….isn't that what intelligence is supposed to do?

Why Is Autism So Drastically on the Rise? An Environmental Horror Story

An investigation into the relationship between environmental poisons and human health is riveting — and terrifying.

If horror is your genre, environmental writer Brita Belli’s The Autism Puzzle, is the book for you. Her terrifying look at the chemicals we eat, drink and breathe is guaranteed to make your hair stand on end.

We should thank her for it.

Statistics released earlier this spring by the Centers for Disease Control revealed that one in 88 U.S. born toddlers has an autism spectral disorder—from the less severe Asperger’s Syndrome to the so-called classical form of the ailment. Worse, it’s not just a North American phenomenon; Belli also reports a 57 percent spike in Asia and Europe.

Read full article.

Russian men: an endangered species?

Continue reading “Dolphin: Autism Up, Sperm Down”

2012/12/072012/12/07

Mini-Me: Obama Approves CIA War on Syria, CIA & Arabs Arming Islamic Militants Instead — But Wait, Could This Be Smoke Related to Benghazi-Based Acts of War on Syria?

Corruption, Government, Ineptitude, Media, Military

Huh?

New York Times: Arms Shipments ‘Secretly’ Approved by Obama Admin. Ended Up in Hands of Islamic Militants

Jason Howerton

The Blaze, 5 December 2012

U.S.-Approved Arms for Libya Rebels Fell Into Jihadis’ Hands

By JAMES RISEN, MARK MAZZETTI and MICHAEL S. SCHMIDT

New York Times, December 5, 2012

WASHINGTON — The Obama administration secretly gave its blessing to arms shipments to Libyan rebels from Qatar last year, but American officials later grew alarmed as evidence grew that Qatar was turning some of the weapons over to Islamic militants, according to United States officials and foreign diplomats.

. . . . . . .

“To do this right, you have to have on-the-ground intelligence and you have to have experience,” said Vali Nasr, a former State Department adviser who is now dean of the Paul H. Nitze School of Advanced International Studies, part of Johns Hopkins University. “If you rely on a country that doesn’t have those things, you are really flying blind. When you have an intermediary, you are going to lose control.”

Read full article.

Tip of the Hat to Jaimi Miller and Richard Byrd at Google+.

Continue reading “Mini-Me: Obama Approves CIA War on Syria, CIA & Arabs Arming Islamic Militants Instead — But Wait, Could This Be Smoke Related to Benghazi-Based Acts of War on Syria?”

2012/12/062012/12/06

Chuck Spinney: Pentagon Escaping Fiscal Cuts — To No Good End

Commerce, Corruption, Government, Military

TIME BATTLE BLOG: MILITARY SPENDING

Business As Usual Inside Obama’s Pentagon

By Chuck Spinney, Time.com, Dec. 06, 2012

Winslow Wheeler’s three-part series on the Navy that wrapped up on Battleland Wednesday shows that the sea service is up to its old tricks.

To wit, it is impregnating President Obama’s five-year defense program by front-loading today’s budget in a way that creates irresistible pressure to grow its future budgets –even if it takes a marginal reduction in the near term.

Think of this as an emerging right to programmatic life issue, because, for reasons explained by Wheeler, abortion is out of the question, even though a programmatic miscarriage is inevitable.

Any one who doubts this, or thinks this future pathway is unlikely or accidental, need only recall the braggadocio of Ronald Reagan’s chief navy stud, Navy Secretary John Lehman, when he told a seminar in January 1983 at the Brookings Institution, that it was “too late” to stop the buildup to a 600-ship navy.

“We’ve already accomplished it,” he continued, “because we front-loaded (emphasis added) the budget.”

Predictably, Lehman’ 600-ship navy miscarried a few years later in the late 1980s in terms of fleet size, if not money.

Read full article.