Category: Corruption

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Marcus Aurelius: DoD Tries to Rip 3/4 Billion Out of Health Care – Panetta Caught and Challenged by Congress on Integrity & Intelligence

Communities of Practice, Corruption, Peace Intelligence
Marcus Aurelius
Looks like Congress has caught DoD in a credibility and integrity breach:
  • For years, DoD — including the Secretary of Defense, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and Service Chiefs, have been crying poormouth on military health care and trying to use military beneficiaries as cash cows to fund what should be 100% taxpayer-funded, specifically lifetime health care to career military personnel.
  • .
  • Now, DoD comes to Congress saying that they have $708 million dollars extra in their health care accounts that they wish to “reprogram” to unspecified “higher priorities.”
  • .
  • Government Executive magazine lays out the story, first below.  Military Officers Association of America provides the supporting documentation, the DoD reprogramming request (second below) and a letter to SECDEF from a bunch of curious Congressmen (third below).
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David Isenberg: President Wants What IC Cannot Give – With Comment by Robert Steele

Corruption, Government, IO Impotency, Knowledge, Politics
David Isenberg

President Obama Wants Smartphones, Tablets To Improve Intel Monitoring: Sez Head of White House Communications Agency

WASHINGTON: When the Presidential Daily Briefing occurs, a top intelligence official traditionally hands the president a folder with a sheaf of paper inside. The president may read what's inside or have it presented by the intelligence official. Then comes question time, when the chief executive and commander in chief can ask how reliable a source is or question the assumptions of an analysis he's just read.

But that will change. The president and his top officials want and will get a single mobile device allowing them to access highly classified and unclassified data wherever they are. The early fruits of the intelligence community's early efforts to do that are visible in the photo above. It shows President Obama in the Oval Office on January 31 using a technically neutered tablet as part of the Presidential Daily Briefing.

. . . . . .

A single device is the Holy Grail for the intelligence community and senior government officials, but it will be some time before it happens, the colonel said. In the near term, the White House hopes to issue two devices: one for classified and another for unclassified communications. It is coordinating with the Defense Department and the National Security Agency to ensure access to secure defense communications networks intelligence grade cryptographic algorithms.

Read full article.

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Chuck Spinney: Invented People Plan War Over Temple on the Mount

Corruption, Cultural Intelligence, Government, Military
Chuck Spinney

I can not judge this source … I do not know anything about the publication — the article is fascinating.  In 2008, I visited Temple Mount and saw the Israeli archaeology project, which literally abuts the al Aqsa Mosque.  Totally sealed off and makes it inconvenient for Palestinians to visit mosque.  If they decide to rebuild temple, they will have to destroy mosque — I need not tell what that means.

Surely, Israelis understand that means going to the mattresses with the entire Arab world (including Christian Arabs because they depend on religious tolerance which is more prevalent among moslems than jew in that part of world).  In fact, rebuilding the temple could unite Shi'ites and Sunnis.  Netanyahu, for all his rhetoric, is more cautious about starting wars — look at his track record — he is a master of bluffing.  Olmert and perhaps Barak are more dangerous.

The problem of course, is controlling the right wing crazies in Israel, and IDF is definitely getting more religious.  The really tragic irony in all this is the most Israelis come from or are descended from eastern Europeans (Netanyahu is of Lithuanian descent), and in all probability, the vast bulk of E. European Jewry is descended from Kazars who converted from paganism to Judiaism 400-800 years AFTER the temple was destroyed.  The true descendants of the Jews who suffered the Roman persecution are probably the Palestinians who converted to Islam.  A distinguished Israeli historian at U. of Tel Aviv, Schlomo Sand, has written a stunning history of the Jewish “diaspora” that concluded most was the result of conversion not migration.  The name of the book is The Invention of Jewish People.  I really recommend it.

Chuck

Israel – Temple Mount War Moves Begin as Iran Back Up

Continue reading “Chuck Spinney: Invented People Plan War Over Temple on the Mount”

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Penguin: Official Report on 2011 Cost of Intelligence “Security”

Corruption, Government, Knowledge, Politics

good indication…” that we are out of our minds

Information Security Oversight Office 2011 Cost Report

Phi Beta Iota:  The cost, totalling $12 billion, is as good as a deceptive bureaucracy can provide.  Our own estimate based on other sources over time is that it is closer to $15-20 billion, and this is without considering the cost of lost productivity, lost critical access to multiple data bases (the National Counterterrorism Center, for example, should be included in any calculation of the cost of idiocy, along with half or more of the cost of the Department of Homeland Security and half the cost of the Pentagon).   Then of course one has the complex cost of dereliction of duty across all the Cabinet functional areas.   Good people trapped in a bad system that is totally lacking in both intelligence and integrity.

Continue reading “Penguin: Official Report on 2011 Cost of Intelligence “Security””

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Chuck Spinney: Syria Lessons Learned and Current SitRep

05 Civil War, 07 Other Atrocities, 08 Wild Cards, 10 Security, 11 Society, Civil Society, Commerce, Corruption, Cultural Intelligence, Government, Military, Peace Intelligence
Chuck Spinney

Attached is a very thoughtful report on what is happening to Syria, written by a long-time observer of the Middle East.

Chuck Spinney
La Spezia, Italia

The Destruction of Syria

by Patrick Seale

Agence Global, 24 Jul 200012

Once one of the most solid states in the Middle East and a key pivot of the regional power structure, Syria is now facing wholesale destruction. The consequences of the unfolding drama are likely to be disastrous for Syria’s territorial integrity, for the well-being of its population, for regional peace, and for the interests of external powers deeply involved in the crisis.

EXTRACT:

Continue reading “Chuck Spinney: Syria Lessons Learned and Current SitRep”

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Mini-Me: NCAA fines Penn State $60M, vacates wins from 1998-2011

Academia, Corruption, Cultural Intelligence, Culture, Ethics, Idiocy
Who? Mini-Me?

Huh?

NCAA fines Penn State $60M, vacates wins from 1998-2011

STATE COLLEGE, Pa. (AP) — The NCAA crippled Penn State football for years to come and practically tore Joe Paterno's name out of the record books Monday, erasing 14 years of victories and imposing an unprecedented $60 million fine and other punishment over the child sexual abuse scandal.

“Football will never again be placed ahead of educating, nurturing and protecting young people,” NCAA President Mark Emmert declared in announcing the penalties.

The governing body of college sports shredded what was left of the Hall of Fame coach's legacy – the sanctions cost Paterno 111 wins and his standing as the most successful coach in the history of big-time college football – while dealing a severe blow to the university's gold-plated gridiron program.

The NCAA ordered Penn State to sit out the postseason for four years, slashed the number of scholarships it can award and placed football on probation, all of which will make it difficult for the Nittany Lions to compete at the sport's highest level.

Raising the specter of an exodus of athletes, the NCAA said current or incoming football players at Penn State are free to immediately transfer and compete at another school.

For a university that always claimed to hold itself to a higher standard – for decades, Paterno preached “success with honor” – Monday's announcement completed a stunning fall from grace.

Read full article with video and photos.

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Mini-Me: Assassination Nation – How Others See the USA….

07 Other Atrocities, Corruption, Cultural Intelligence, Government, IO Deeds of War, Military
Who? Mini-Me?

Assassination Nation

Fifty Years of US Targeted ‘Kill Lists’: From the Phoenix Program to Predator Drones

by DOUG NOBLE

 “A broad-gauged program of targeted assassination has now displaced counterinsurgency as the prevailing expression of the American way of war.”

–Andrew Bacevich [1]

Counterpunch, 19 July 2012

Click on Image to Enlarge

EXTRACT:

In fact, US assassination and targeted killing, with presidential approval, has been going on covertly for at least half a century. Ironically, all this drone killing now offers us a  new opportunity: to pry open the Pandora’s box hiding long-held secrets of covert US assassination and targeted killing, and to expose them to the light of day. What we would find is that the only things new in the latest, more publicized revelations about kill lists and assassinations are the use of drones, the president’s hands-on approach in vetting targets, and the global scope of the drone killing.

Continue reading “Mini-Me: Assassination Nation – How Others See the USA….”

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