Idiocy – Page 117 – Public Intelligence Blog

2013/02/232013/02/23

SchwartzReport: 1,000 Year Drought in Eight Years — Corrupt Ignorant Governments Will Ignore This and Waste All Eight of Those Years

12 Water, Corruption, Government, Idiocy, Ineptitude

This is what we are headed towards unless we make massive adjustments in our way of life.

Worst Drought in 1,000 Years Could Begin in Eight Years

Beginning in just eight years, we could see permanent climate conditions across the North American Southwest that are comparable to the worst megadrought in 1,000 years. (1)

The latest research from the Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory at Columbia University published in December 2012 has some truly astounding news. The megadroughts referred to in the paper published in Nature Climate Change happened around about 900 to 1300 AD and are so extreme that they have no modern counterpart for comparison (these megadroughts will be referred to in the following as the “12th century megadrought”). The research was funded by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA).

We have been warned for decades that we would be facing a megadrought if we did not do something about climate pollution. We did not, and now according to the projections of a new study, that is just what the future may hold. And remember, projected conditions similar to the worst megadrought in 1,000 years would be the baseline conditions. Dry periods, which we normally refer to as drought times today, would be superimposed on top of the megadrought extremeness.

Read rest of article.

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2013/02/22

Berto Jongman: The Terror Courts – An Inside Look at Rough Justice, Torture — and the Military Prosecutor Who Refused Illegal Orders — at Guantanamo, Cuba

07 Other Atrocities, 09 Justice, 09 Terrorism, 11 Society, Corruption, Cultural Intelligence, Director of National Intelligence et al (IC), DoD, Government, Idiocy, Ineptitude, IO Deeds of War, Military

“The Terror Courts”: An Inside Look at Rough Justice, Torture at Guantánamo Bay

Wall Street Journal journalist Jess Bravin reports on the controversial military commissions at Guantánamo. Describing it as “the most important legal story in decades,” Bravin uncovers how the Bush administration quickly drew up an alternative legal system to try men captured abroad after the Sept. 11 attacks. Soon evidence obtained by torture was being used to prosecute prisoners, but some military officers refused to take part. We speak to Jess Bravin, author of The Terror Courts: Rough Justice at Guantanamo Bay, and to Lt. Col. Stuart Couch, a former Guantánamo prosecutor featured in the book. [includes rush transcript]

Headline Links to Video. Book Links to Amazon.

Soon after the September 11 attacks in 2001, the United States captured hundreds of suspected al-Qaeda terrorists in Afghanistan and around the world. By the following January the first of these prisoners arrived at the U.S. military’s prison camp in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, where they were subject to President George W. Bush’s executive order authorizing their trial by military commissions. Jess Bravin, the Wall Street Journal’s Supreme Court correspondent, was there within days of the prison’s opening, and has continued ever since to cover the U.S. effort to create a parallel justice system for enemy aliens. A maze of legal, political, and moral issues has stood in the way of justice—issues often raised by military prosecutors who found themselves torn between duty to the chain of command and their commitment to fundamental American values.

While much has been written about Guantanamo and brutal detention practices following 9/11, Bravin is the first to go inside the Pentagon’s prosecution team to expose the real-world legal consequences of those policies. Bravin describes cases undermined by inadmissible evidence obtained through torture, clashes between military lawyers and administration appointees, and political interference in criminal prosecutions that would be shocking within the traditional civilian and military justice systems. With the Obama administration planning to try the alleged 9/11 conspirators at Guantanamo—and vindicate the legal experiment the Bush administration could barely get off the ground—The Terror Courts could not be more timely.

Continue reading “Berto Jongman: The Terror Courts – An Inside Look at Rough Justice, Torture — and the Military Prosecutor Who Refused Illegal Orders — at Guantanamo, Cuba”

2013/02/212013/02/21

DefDog: “Big Data” poses big problem for Pentagon

Corruption, Idiocy, Ineptitude, IO Impotency, Military

Deja vu — couldn't handle it in the 1980's and 1990's either….and those were baby loads.

‘Big data’ poses big problem for Pentagon

by Mike Hoffman

Defense Tech, February 20, 2013

FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla. — Data scientists are the most in demand job for the military, according to Reggie Brothers, the deputy assistant secretary of defense for Research.

The military has a problem with “big data” — the problem being that it collects too much of it. The infatuation with unmanned vehicles and the sensors mounted onto them has spurred a wave of data collected on the battlefield.

Using that data has caused military leaders headaches. Brothers said here at the Association of the U.S. Army’s Winter Symposium on Wednesday that the Army and the other services have placed their focus on PED, or processing, exploitation, and dissemination.

He used the ARGUS-IS as an example of the major advances being made in the world of intelligence sensors. The ARGUS-IS can stream up to a million terabytes of data and record 5,000 hours of high definition footage per day. It can do this with the 1.8 gigapixel camera and 368 different sensors all housed in the ARGUS-IS sensor that can fly on an MQ-9 Reaper.

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2013/02/192013/02/19

Reference: Top-Notch Report on Chinese Exploitation of US Idiocy & Incompetence

Corruption, Government, Idiocy, Ineptitude, IO Impotency, Military

2013 Mandiant_PRC Cyber APT1_Report

Phi Beta Iota: The naive and the unscrupulous emphasis external threats and internal vulnerabilities while glossing over the FACT that this threat was clearly articulated by Winn Schwartau, among others, in 1990, and clearly articulated, in a letter delivered in 1994 to Marty Harris at the National Information Infratructure (NII) reporting to Al Gore, that put together in one place the best possible starting point for securing the entire US cyber-infrastructure with a starting budget of $1 billion a year.

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2013/02/19

Eagle: 1989 Trading Cards — 36 Friendly Dictators “Best Pals” of the US Government Acting In Our Name

07 Other Atrocities, Corruption, Government, Idiocy, Ineptitude

300 Million Talons... — 300 Million Talons…

Friendly Dictators

Back in 1989 Bill Sienkiewicz illustrated a deck of cards designed to bring to light some of the sleazier folks that the U.S. government had done deals with. The text on each card was written by Dennis Bernstein and Laura Sydell. I wish there was an updated version covering the last 17 years, but in the meantime I’ve prepared a giant post with the images and text from the pack of cards. (This is an egregious copyright violation, but since these cards have been out of print for more than 15 years, I’m hoping no one will call me on it. If they did, I would–of course–take this down.) This will be a very image-intensive post–as usual, the little pictures are links to the bigger versions.

Here’s the cover from the box:

And this is the “about the creators” text (looking at the current bios for the creators, there has been some interesting career progression since they did this):

DENNIS BERNSTEIN is the Executive Producer of “Undercurrents,” heard daily on WBAI in New York, and nationally on the Pacifica Radio Network. His articles have appeared in The New York Times, The Village Voice, New York Newsday, Spin Magazine, In These Times, Extra!, and others.

LAURA SYDELL has a law degree and is a phi beta kappa graduate of William Smith College. She has reported for National Public Radio’s “All Things Considered”, “Crossroads”, and for the Pacifica Radio Network.

BILL SIENKIEWICZ’s work in Brought to Light has garnered rave reviews from Publisher’s Weekly, The American Library Association Booklist, and The Village Voice. His award-winning artwork can be seen in such comics as Moon Knight, Elektra Assassin, Stray Toasters, and Real War Stories.

And now, the cards themselves:

See 36 color cards with full text.

Continue reading “Eagle: 1989 Trading Cards — 36 Friendly Dictators “Best Pals” of the US Government Acting In Our Name”

2013/02/19

DefDog: Gun Grabbers Want Annual Home Searches

Idiocy, Law Enforcement

Of all places — what was once the last bastion of sanity, now suffering from retarded legislators.

Washington State gun grabbers go for searching your home once a year to confirm gun storage compliance

[Editors note: They got caught trying to put this in a new bill and then claimed it was a ‘mistake'. They really do think we are that stupid. Now we have to show them what the cost is…Jim W. Dean]

… from Tim Brown at Freedom Outpost

Washington State Democrats have sponsored Senate Bill 5737, which has a little provision that apparently was to go unnoticed that would have said that police have a right to search a private citizen’s home once per year if they own certain types of firearms.

According to the legislation:

In order to continue to possess an assault weapon that was legally possessed on the effective date of this section, the person possessing shall … safely and securely store the assault weapon. The sheriff of the county may, no more than once per year, conduct an inspection to ensure compliance with this subsection.

Yes, that means liberal Democrats pushed forward this legislation in open and defiance of the Fourth Amendment. But that’s not all. When they were caught with their hands in the cookie jar, they exclaimed it wasn’t their fault and that they made mistake.

Read full article.

2013/02/182013/02/18

Marcus Aurelius: Washington Times NAILS the Pentagon for Lack of Integrity — a Total Government Shut-Down for 22 Days, with Documented Cause & Effect Might Shock & Awe

Corruption, Idiocy, Military

(1) I don't know whether this article's headline is accurate or not; I'd like to think it is.

(2) IMHO, root causes of sequestration issue lie with POTUS who suggested concept, Joint Select Committee on Deficit Reduction which failed to do their job, and both parties of both houses of Congress who have failed to pass a budget.

(3) DoD, particularly SECDEF, CJCS, and Service Chiefs, IMHO has/have credibility problems because early in the process, they were all shouting [****], probably politically directed, that DoD should be a participant in deficit reduction.

(4) Lack of planning, while mandated by OMB, is inexcusable. Secret planning and wargaming goes on in DoD all the time. This could have been handled with a few people working in a vault with an offline computer. That would have postured DoD to issue the statutory furlough notices to DoD employees several weeks ago.

(5) While I know some DoD employees will disagree with me from a personal cash flow perspective, I think that now that sequestration is upon the USG, if not resolved by 01 March, the best thing to do would be to shut down the government on that date for 22 days while documenting and aggressively publicizing in graphic detail the effects. And there would be effects — people would die, air traffic system would probably shut down, criminals would run rampant, important things would not happen, bills would go unpaid, and the list would go on and on. That ((MIGHT)) seer into public and officeholder minds the inadvisibility of every doing this kind of thing again).

Pentagon aims ax to make a point with sequester cuts, uses worst-case scenarios to force deal

By Rowan Scarborough

The Washington Times, Sunday, February 17, 2013

The Obama administration is putting attention-getting Pentagon projects on the chopping block in a bid to pressure Congress into making a deal that avoids $46 billion in military budget cuts March 1, analysts and congressional officials say.

They use terms such as “gold watches,” “hot button” and “Washington Monumenting” to describe the cuts outlined over the past two weeks by the chiefs of the Army, Air Force, Marine Corps, Navy and National Guard in briefings and hearings.

Continue reading “Marcus Aurelius: Washington Times NAILS the Pentagon for Lack of Integrity — a Total Government Shut-Down for 22 Days, with Documented Cause & Effect Might Shock & Awe”