Corruption – Page 762 – Public Intelligence Blog

Phi Beta Iota: The interactive edition is well worth going through. Below are highlights from our own review.

Six Risks Stand Out: Fiscal crisis, Geopolitical Conflict, Climate Change, Extreme Energy Price Volatility, Economic Disparity, Global Governance Failure.

Risk Interconnectivity Map: Central to the map are Economic Disparity and Global Governance Failures. Three clusters add depth to the potential sustained crisis: Fiscal-Energy Volatility; Crime, Corruption, and Failed States; and Water-Food Security.

Overall this is one of the most extraordinary points of reference in existence.

Governance Failures & Economic Disparity: WEF Global Risks Report 2011 Posted: July 18th, 2011 | Author: chris arkenberg

The Global Risks Report 2011 from the World Economic Forum highlights two primary megatrends with the potential to inject significant disruption into global systems. From the report:

Two risks are especially significant given their high degrees of impact and interconnectedness. Economic disparity and global governance failures both influence the evolution of many other global risks and inhibit our capacity to respond effectively to them.

In this way, the global risk context in 2011 is defined by a 21st century paradox: as the world grows together, it is also growing apart.

It is worth noting how inter-related these two megatrends are as wealth consolidation into an elite class enables them to further deconstruct global governance mechanisms. This has been a feedback loop for at least the past 40 years, if not longer, as western growth fueled the rise of non-state economic bodies & super-empowered individuals who then lobbied against regulatory measures that would aim to keep their rise in check and mitigate the risk of disparity. Elites consolidate more money & power, further driving disparity and eroding governance. What results is an interstitial vacuum where corporate intervention fails to see any profit motive and where state intervention lacks the funds or will to govern effectively.

In effect, the combination of super-empowered non-state actors, failures of state governance, and widespread economic disparity undermines the Rule of Law by releasing elites from accountability and driving the underclass deeper into criminality.

Continue reading “Review (Guest): Global Risks 2011 – Governance Failures & Economic Disparity (World Economic Forum)”

2011/08/022011/08/02

Penguin: TwitterGate – Gingrich Leads Political Corruption in Cyberspace, 92% Fake, Palin, Romney, Bachman, Pawlenty All Fake 70% of Their “Followers”

Civil Society, Corruption, Cultural Intelligence, Government

92 percent of Gingrich’s Twitter followers are fake, search firm says

Newt Gringrich’s campaign denies the allegations, claiming they never used “agencies” to inflate the presidential candidate’s Twitter follower numbers.

GlobalPost, 2 August 2011

A social media analytics site says that 92 percent of Newt Gingrich’s 1.3 million Twitter followers are fake. The New York-based company, PeekYou, used an algorithm to evaluate whether Gringrich’s followers were real individuals, ABC News reports. It found most of Gringrich’s followers were business accounts, private accounts, anonymous accounts with no other web presence or spambots.<

. . . . . . .

PeekYou has also analyzed the Twitter accounts of the other Republican presidential hopefuls, according to Gawker, and has found that Gingrich is not the only GOP politician with a large spambot following. PeekYou claims that only 20 percent of Sarah Palin’s followers, 26 percent of Mitt Romney’s followers, 28 percent of Michele Bachmann’s followers and 32 percent of Tim Pawlenty’s followers are real humans.

Read full story….

Phi Beta Iota: Useful metrics emerge from this–extrapolating and by extention, everything about Gingrich can be presumed to be 92% fake unless proven otherwise, and everything about the other Republicans as 70% fake unless proven otherwise. Cyberspace is very unkind to those who lie for a living.

2011/08/02

Koko: US Government Changes It Story — BearGate

03 Environmental Degradation, 07 Other Atrocities, Corruption, Cultural Intelligence, Government, Journalism/Free-Press/Censorship, Misinformation & Propaganda, Politics of Science & Science of Politics, Power Behind-the-Scenes/Special Interests

29 July Koko: US Government Suspends Scientist For Integrity Inquiry – Who Suspends the USG?

2 August Scientist suspension is about project's management

The government's new new story:

ANCHORAGE, Alaska (AP) — The U.S. government suspended an Arctic biologist over how he awarded a polar bear research project to the University of Alberta and its management, not for his earlier scientific work detailing drowned polar bears, a watchdog group said Monday.

The reality check:

Documents provided by the watchdog group showed questioning by investigators earlier this year focused on the polar bear observations that Monnett and researcher Jeffrey Gleason made in 2004.

Continue reading “Koko: US Government Changes It Story — BearGate”

2011/08/02

DefDog: More Government Waste on Vaporware

Corruption, Government, IO Deeds of War, Military, Politics of Science & Science of Politics, Power Behind-the-Scenes/Special Interests

U.S. Spy Agencies Want Software That Can Figure Out Where Any Photo Was Taken

By Clay Dillow

POPSI, 08.02.201

American intelligence agencies are hoping to turn propaganda videos, images captured from enemy data caches, and other pics snapped with or without the subjects’ knowledge into readymade geolocation tags via a system that can identify exactly where any photo was taken anywhere in the world. If successful, such a tool could turn images captured from enemy hard drives–like those snatched from Osama bin Laden’s Pakistan compound back in May–into the makings for a point-by-point Google map of terrorist travels.

Read full article….

2011/08/022011/08/02

Chuck Spinney: Libya, Rebels, & the West–A Debacle

04 Inter-State Conflict, 05 Civil War, 07 Other Atrocities, 08 Wild Cards, 10 Security, 11 Society, Articles & Chapters, Corruption, Cultural Intelligence, Government, IO Impotency, Military

Note: the author of this important report is one of best journalists covering the wars of Western intervention in the Islamic world. CS

August 1, 2011

Follow the Oil and the Money

Why the West is Committed to the Murderous Rebels in Libya

By PATRICK COCKBURN, Counterpunch

In keeping with the British Government's well-established record of comical ineptitude in dealing with Libya, foreign secretary William Hague chose to recognize the rebel leaders in Benghazi as the legitimate government of the country at the very moment some of them may have been shooting or torturing to death their chief military commander.

Read full article….

See Also:

Cynthia McKinney Reports from Libya

2011/08/02

Chuck Spinney: Israeli Ethnic Cleansing of the Bedouin

05 Civil War, 06 Genocide, 07 Other Atrocities, 08 Wild Cards, 10 Security, 11 Society, Articles & Chapters, Civil Society, Corruption, Cultural Intelligence, Government, IO Deeds of War, Military

Palestinians fear for ancient West Bank water source

By Tom Perry, Reuters

RASHAYIDA, West Bank | Thu Jul 28, 2011 6:43am EDT

(Reuters) – – Hewn from rock, the cavernous cisterns which dot the desert beyond Bethlehem have for centuries harvested winter rain to provide shepherds and their flocks with water through summer.

Under a baking sun, an elderly Bedouin explains how cisterns he remembers from childhood, many of them restored to full working order in the last few years, are once again helping his goat-herding community to survive.

That, he concludes, is why the Israeli authorities who control the West Bank have demolished at least three in the area since November.

“Maybe they are doing this to make us leave. We will not leave,” said Falah Hedawa, 64, sitting on cushions in his tent home pitched in the hills that slope down to the Dead Sea.

Out into the desert, a stagnant pool marked the spot where one of the cisterns, chiseled out of a hillside, had stood until its recent demolition. A mud trail on the otherwise dry ground indicated where the water inside had drained away toward a wadi, a valley which becomes a river when the rain falls.

Israel has demolished 20 rainwater collection cisterns in the West Bank in the first half of this year, according to the U.N. Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), which monitors conditions in the Palestinian territories.

Read full article…

Phi Beta Iota: There are two crimes against humanity here, the first against the Palestinians, the second against the centuries old cisterns that collect winter water.

The Attack on the Liberty–The Untold Story of Israel’s Deadly 1967 Assault on a U.S. Spy Ship

2011/08/012011/08/01

Richard Wright: Jail Time for Over-Classification?

07 Other Atrocities, 09 Justice, 10 Security, 11 Society, Articles & Chapters, Corruption, Cultural Intelligence, Director of National Intelligence et al (IC), DoD, Government

Is it possible the good guys are going to win the issue of over-classifcation? Can a real Open Source Agency (OSA) become the new face of strateic intelligence?

Complaint Seeks Punishment for Classification of Documents

By SCOTT SHANE

New York Times, August 1, 2011

EXTRACT

Under the executive order governing classification, the punishment could include dismissal, suspension without pay, reprimand or loss of a security clearance.

. . . . . .

“I’ve never seen a more deliberate and willful example of government officials improperly classifying a document,” he said.

Phi Beta Iota: Since the early 1990's the general practice has been to classify everything, and agency heads and the limited number of classifying authorities have been severely derelict in their duty, allowing anyone down to the GS-1 night sweeper to classify documents “in their name.” In this specific instance, the Drake case, it would be quite nice to see someone go to jail. It won't happen, but both the Courts and the public are growing very intolerant of Executive malfeasance that would make Dick Cheney proud. In the purest sense of the world, the US Intelligence Community agency heads are corrupt. They lack integrity.

Reference: 1996 Hill Testimony on Secrecy

Reference: 1996 Testimony to Moynihan Commisson

1993 TESTIMONY on National Security Information