COMMENT: IMHO, incredibly irresponsible behavior by UK judicial system. However, I really wonder whether USG will really degrade the special relationship because I suspect it would be cutting our nose off to spite our face. While I think we have clear dominance in some intelligence disciplines and coverages, I also think the UK dances rings around us in others. Marcus
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Intelligence ties between UK and US in jeopardy
By DAVID STRINGER The Associated Press
Thursday, February 11, 2010; 7:32 PM
LONDON — Intelligence ties between London and Washington have been jeopardized by a British court's disclosure that a terrorism suspect was beaten and shackled in U.S. custody, diplomats and security officials said Wednesday.
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“This is more serious than the Cambridge spy ring, this is more serious than Robert Hanssen,” said Bob Ayers, a London-based former U.S. intelligence officer. “This has the potential to be far more damaging.”
This is the best overall summary we have found, with devastating looks at Larry Summers' past published speculation on how manipulating the gold price downwards could improve the value of Treasury issues, the connections with Alan Greenspan, Robert Rubin–it all hangs together and is elegantly brought together.
New Details Emerge in Salomi Hostage Case: High Drama in HTS
by John Stanton
Observers indicate that two individuals in HTS leadership positions on the ground in Iraq—Lieutenant Colonel Byrd (Program Management Office – FWD) and Michael Goains, GG-15 (Theater Coordination Element) had direct knowledge of Issa Salomi's prior forays outside Camp Liberty/Victory Base Complex in Iraq unaccompanied by his teammates (team designation IZ-02,) or US military personnel. Salomi was apparently taken by an Iraqi insurgent group in January 2010 and a video of him recently appeared in global media outlets in February 2010.
Observers have also pointed out that Salomi is not, in fact, a contractor but is instead a temporary US Army Civilian employee. In 2009, HTS reverted to a government program and contractors were forced to choose between leaving or converting to US government civilian status.
“There is so much drama within the HTS program right now that it is unbelievable. Many, many people are being fired, rearranged and moved around due to management incompetence and personality problems,” said observers. “The amount of money being squandered is ridiculous.”
Here are two excellent items on the greedy cultish institutional culture of Goldman Sachs, which has its own revolving door in and out of the Federal government.
Average pay this recessionary year for the 30,000 staff is expected to be a record $700,000. Top earners will get tens of millions, several hundred thousand times more than a cleaner at the firm. When they have finished getting “filthy rich by 40”, as the company saying goes, these alpha dogs don’t put their feet up. They parachute into some of the most senior political posts in the US and beyond, prompting accusations that they “rule the world”. Number 85 Broad Street is the home of Goldman Sachs.
Goldman and the other big Wall Street firms have already won big on this round. They will plow even more money into defeating political candidates who have opposed them – for example, on credit card legislation. The Republicans see this coming and are rubbing their hands with glee.
With their incentive structure intact – they get the upside and regular folk get the downside – and their closest friends on their way back to power, Big Finance is ready to roll into the next great global boom-bust cycle.
Phi Beta Iota: President Obama still does not get it–he was funded to keep Senator McCain out of the office, now he is going to be unfunded to put the original Republican sell-outs (Senator Phil Gamm R-TX et al) back in. What the President especially does not get is that the only way to put Goldman Sachs back in its box is to let We the People out of ours. Electoral Reform in time for November 2010 (first four elements) and then 2012 does three things: 1) assures him of a second term; 2) buries the two-party tyranny; and 3) restores honest civil reality-based give and take to our democracy.
Monday, February 1, 2010, was a day that should live in budgetary infamy. The Defense Department released its Quadrennial Defense Review (QDR) and its accompanying Fiscal Year 2011 budget request, which is the first year of the Fiscal Year 2011-2015 five year plan (2011-2015 FYDP). These documents are available on the internet and can be downloaded in PDF format here: QDR and the FY 2011 budget.
Even by the dismal intellectual standards of Pentagon bureaucracy, the QDR and the FY 2011 budget, taken together, establish a new standard of analytical vacuity, psychological denial, and just plane meaningless drivel. I will keep this short by using just one important case to prove my allegation. Judge for yourself if it is necessary and sufficient to make the point.
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The chaos in the accounting system provides the intellectual “grease” to lubricate the engine driving narrow bureaucratic agendas that are causing the force structure meltdown. Senior decision makers can not possibly understand the trade offs they are really making when they put together a budget, assuming they wanted to, which is also in doubt.
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Phi Beta Iota: The Pentagon is only as competent as the combination of three factors:
Here are the four requirements documents for the all-source fusion analytic workstation converging in 1989–we do not have this today because no one has ever tried to manage the US Government's approach to IT–distributed chaos and centralized ignorance just will not do.
I just returned from Haiti with Hebler.We flew in at 3 AM Sunday to the scene of such incredible destruction on one side, and enormous ineptitude and criminal neglect on the other.
Port o Prince is in ruins. The rest of the country is fairly intact. Our team was a rescue team and we carried special equipment that locates people buried under the rubble.
There are easily 200,000 dead, the city smells like a charnel house. The bloody UN was there for 5 years doing apparently nothing but wasting US Taxpayers money.
The ones I ran into were either incompetents or outright anti American. Most are French or french speakers, worthless every damn one of them.
While 1800 rescuers were ready willing and able to leave the airport and go do our jobs, the UN and USAID ( another organization full of little OBamites and communists that openly speak against Americana) [REDACTED].
These two organizations exemplified their parochialism by:
The software chapter in