Category: Corruption

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Michael Ostrolenk: Openness Groups Denounce House Republicans for Killing FOIA Legislation

03 Economy, 09 Justice, 11 Society, Blog Wisdom, Civil Society, Corruption, Cultural Intelligence, Government, IO Impotency
Michael Ostrolenk

Openness Groups Denounce House Republican Leadership Decision to Erase Progress on Bipartisan FOIA Legislation

Press Release Contact: Amy Bennett or Patrice McDermott, OpenTheGovernment.org, 202-332-6736

July 26, 2010 – Organizations that support openness and accountability were shocked and saddened to learn that House Republican leadership plans to wipe out bipartisan progress on Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) legislation in the interest of pushing its budget package.

“If House leadership wishes to make good on their pledge to improve transparency and accountability, they should not kill this good government bill with strong bipartisan support as a political maneuver,” said Angela Canterbury, Director of Public Policy at the Project On Government Oversight (POGO). “Instead, they should walk their talk by making the Faster FOIA Act law.”

This afternoon, at the direction of House leadership, the House Rules Committee is poised to approve a rule that allows Speaker Boehner to strip all language out of S. 627, the Faster FOIA Act, and replace it with his budget proposal.

Read rest of release…

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John Robb: When Governments Fail, Criminal Tribes Grow

03 Economy, 09 Justice, 10 Transnational Crime, 11 Society, Blog Wisdom, Corruption, Cultural Intelligence, Government, IO Impotency, Non-Governmental
John Robb

Monday, 25 July 2011

JOURNAL: Knights Templar Norway/Mexico

Two recent attempts at revivals of the Knights Templar.

One:  Norway.  In this video posted by Anders (the Oslo bomber) before his attack.  He makes a plea for a revival of the Knights Templar at the end of the video (the first part is an attack on liberalism/multiculturalism and islamic immigration).  His bloody attack was an attempt to jump start a revival through what's called “a plausible promise.”

Two:  Mexico.  A splinter group from the Michoacan La Familia cartel (which is unravelling) has named themselves the Knights Templar.  They have published a code of conduct, eschew drug use, etc.  This group is active in the drug business, growing quickly (the simple rules of conduct required to join it are very viral), and killing every rival in their way (the Zetas, what's left of La Familia, and the Mexican government troops/police).

Why?  The Knights Templar is an historical model that is a ready made formula for manufacturing fictive kinship.  Fictive kinship is the “glue” or “cement” that holds together tribes.  Manufacturing fictive kinship enables the formation of a tribe/gang/cult that is able to defend itself and its interests.

In the case of religiously grounded historical examples like this, it allows the group and its members to believe they are special.  So special they can transcend the laws, customs, and morality of the outside world without remorse/pause.  The result is a group that will often kill in a far more aggressive way than what is seen with groups that are glued together only through economic ties (al Qaeda used this approach).

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DefDog: Criminal Complicity at Department of “Justice”

03 Environmental Degradation, 05 Energy, 07 Other Atrocities, 09 Justice, 11 Society, Civil Society, Corruption, Cultural Intelligence, Government
DefDog Recommends....

CONCLUDING PARAGRAPH:

There is a massive complicity in America today between the corporations that fund elections and the officeholders they elect. Actions like Tim's are aimed at disrupting that complicity. For our children, for our country and for the world, we should honor his courage and self-sacrifice and pledge to follow in his footsteps, each in our own way.

Op-Ed

Tim DeChristopher's courageous bid to save our world

In disrupting a federal auction of oil and gas leases, Tim DeChristopher became a hero, but he now faces as many as 10 years in prison.

By Peter YarrowLos Angeles Times, July 26, 2011
In March, Tim DeChristopher was convicted of two felony counts for a nonviolent act of civil disobedience. Acting out of his deepest convictions and his abiding concern for the survival of humankind, Tim bid on oil and gas leases on federal land that he didn't have the means to pay for. On Tuesday, he could be sentenced to a maximum of 10 years in prison for his actions.
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Dolphin: DARPA Runs Amok in Afghanistan

07 Other Atrocities, 08 Wild Cards, 10 Security, Analysis, Corruption, Cultural Intelligence, Government, Intelligence (government), IO Impotency, Military, Real Time, Waste (materials, food, etc)

More lipstick on a pig, anyone?

The plethora and pace of the development of these one-off “solutions”
is killing me ….the collective defense and intelligence community
apparently can't keep up with themselves in order to prove who is more
irrelevant…. we continue to throw good money after bad.

Will this ever end?

Exclusive: Inside Darpa’s Secret Afghan Spy Machine

Noah Shachtman

WIRED, 21 July 2011

The Pentagon’s top researchers have rushed a classified and controversial intelligence program into Afghanistan. Known as “Nexus 7,” and previously undisclosed as a war-zone surveillance effort, it ties together everything from spy radars to fruit prices in order to glean clues about Afghan instability.

The program has been pushed hard by the leadership of the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency. They see Nexus 7 as both a breakthrough data-analysis tool and an opportunity to move beyond its traditional, long-range research role and into a more active wartime mission.

But those efforts are drawing fire from some frontline intel operators who see Nexus 7 as little more than a glorified grad-school project, wasting tens of millions on duplicative technology that has nothing to do with stopping the Taliban.

“There are no models and there are no algorithms,” says one person familiar with the program, echoing numerous others who spoke on condition of anonymity because they are not authorized to discuss the program publicly. Just “200 lines of buggy Python code to do what imagery analysts do every day.”

Read full article….

Phi Beta Iota:  The mind boggles at the idiocy of “reality mining” where the only reality that can be “computed” is digital, and actual reality is  a 15th century pre-analog illiterate society.  The comments at the end of the article are earthy and on target.  The US Government in the aggregate has lost both its intelligence and its integrity.

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Chuck Spinney: The Afgan Misadventure in One Paragraph

03 Economy, 04 Inter-State Conflict, 05 Civil War, 07 Other Atrocities, 08 Wild Cards, 10 Security, 11 Society, Budgets & Funding, Corruption, Cultural Intelligence, Government, IO Deeds of War, IO Impotency, Military, Officers Call, Power Behind-the-Scenes/Special Interests, Secrecy & Politics of Secrecy, Strategy, Waste (materials, food, etc)
Chuck Spinney

First, the paragraph:

“The enterprise has proved to be a model of how not to go about such things, breaking all the rules of grand strategy: getting in without having any idea of how to get out; almost wilful misdiagnosis of the challenges; changing objectives, and no coherent or consistent plan; mission creep on an heroic scale; disunity of political and military command, also on an heroic scale; diversion of attention and resources [to Iraq] at a critical stage in the adventure; poor choice of local allies, who rapidly became more of a problem than a solution; unwillingness to co-opt the neighbours into the project, and thus address the mission-critical problem of external sanctuary and support; military advice, long on institutional self-interest, but woefully short on serious objective analysis of the problems of pacifying a broken country with largely non-existent institutions of government and security; weak political leadership, notably in subjecting to proper scrutiny militarily heavy approaches, and in explaining to the increasingly, and now decisively, sceptical domestic press and public the benefits of expending so much treasure and blood.”

Sir Sherard Cowper-Coles
British ambassador in Kabul and as special envoy to Afghanistan and Pakistan

The Afghan misadventure

By Lionel Barber, Financial Times, 22/07/11

Phi Beta Iota:  A full reading of “The Afghan misadventure” by Lionel Barber is highly recommended.  The ends with several lessons not understood in Washington, and a marvelous description of NATO as a “tethered goat.”  He also recommends these three books:

Please respect FT.com's ts&cs and copyright policy which allow you to: share links; copy content for personal use; & redistribute limited extracts. Email ftsales.support@ft.com to buy additional rights or use this link to reference the article – http://www.ft.com/cms/s/2/0feac042-b395-11e0-b56c-00144feabdc0.html#ixzz1SxSELLAY

Cables From Kabul: The Inside Story of the West’s Afghanistan Campaign, by Sherard Cowper-Coles, Harper Press, 352 pages

The Wars of Afghanistan: Messianic Terrorism, Tribal Conflicts and the Failures of Great Powers, by Peter Tomsen, PublicAffairs, 912 pages

Dead Men Risen: The Welsh Guards and the Real Story of Britain’s War in Afghanistan, by Toby Harnden, Quercus, 640 pages

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Koko: Hospitals Riskier than Flying…

07 Health, 07 Other Atrocities, 11 Society, Articles & Chapters, Commerce, Commercial Intelligence, Corruption, IO Impotency
Koko the Reflexive

Hospital stays are riskier than flying, says WHO

CTV News.ca  Staff

Date: Friday Jul. 22, 2011 12

EXTRACT

According to Sir Liam Donaldson, the WHO's newly-appointed Envoy for Patient Safety, the chances of dying from a medical error in a hospital anywhere in the world is about 1 in 300. That compares with the risk of dying in a plane crash,  of about 1 in 10 million passengers.

Read full article…

Phi Beta Iota:  this story encapsulates much of what is wrong with modern society, from fog facts (knowns that are not known by most) to corruption.  When combined with the documentation on 50% of every health dollar being waste, and the larger challenge of incoherent uniniformed policy across all ten threats and all twelve core policy domains.

See Also:

Graphic: Information Pathologies

Graphic: Intelligence Maturity Scale

 

noble gold