Idiocy – Page 123 – Public Intelligence Blog

2012/12/192012/12/19

Thomas Briggs: Comments on the US Secret Super Cloud — Dead Since 1995 — With Two Thoughts from Robert Steele

Cloud, Corruption, Government, Idiocy, Ineptitude, IO Impotency

Thomas Leo Briggs is a retired CIA operations officer with 3 years military experience in US Army military police, 3 years as a Special Agent in the Drug Enforcement Administration and 26 years in the CIA. He tried to make use of computer capabilities to aid and assist humint operations in a variety of ways throughout his last 18 years as an operations officer. He is also the author of Cash on Delivery: CIA Special Operations During the Secret War in Laos (Rosebank Press, 2009).

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COMMENTING ON: Richard Wright: Secret Intelligence Cloud, Charlie Allen's Warning, Comment by Robert Steele

Intelligence Agencies Move Towards Single Super-Cloud by Heny Kenyon, Aol Defense, 17 December 2012

So, what we have here, according to Mr. Kenyon, is an effort to develop a pan-agency set of computer servers so that the analysts of all intelligence community (IC) agencies may share data and resources. One reported hope being that such a system will break down existing boundaries between agencies and change their insular cultures.

The first thing a reader notices is that the alleged motivations for this super-cloud are lower costs and higher efficiency. Secondly, the CIA already operates a cloud slightly separate from an NSA cloud consisting of five other intelligence agencies and the FBI. Is that like being slightly pregnant? Does that provide truly lower costs, higher efficiency, and shared resources and data? Wouldn't one expect to find different data and resources on each cloud, though some data and resources may be the same? Moreover, the NSA cloud incorporates the smaller organization-wide clouds of its partner agencies and, in addition, the National Reconnaissance Office has its own plan to build its own cloud. Seems all of that that does not make for lowest costs and highest efficiencies – nor one super-cloud.

Continue reading “Thomas Briggs: Comments on the US Secret Super Cloud — Dead Since 1995 — With Two Thoughts from Robert Steele”

2012/12/17

Eagle: European Court Convicts CIA of Rendition, Torture & Sodomy — Many More Cases Starting to Come Together Against CIA

Corruption, Government, Idiocy, Ineptitude

300 Million Talons... — 300 Million Talons…

Khaled El-Masri, German Allegedly Kidnapped By CIA In Afghanistan, Wins Case

Angela Charlton

Huffington Post, 13 December 2012

PARIS — A European court issued a landmark ruling Thursday that condemned the CIA's “extraordinary renditions” programs and bolstered those who say they were illegally kidnapped and tortured as part of an overzealous war on terrorism.

The European Court of Human Rights ruled that a German car salesman was an innocent victim of torture and abuse, in a long-awaited victory for a man who had failed for years to get courts in the U.S. and Europe to acknowledge what happened to him.

Khaled El-Masri says he was kidnapped from Macedonia in 2003, mistaken for a terrorism suspect, then held for four months and brutally interrogated at an Afghan prison known as the “Salt Pit” run by the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency. He says that once U.S. authorities realized he was not a threat, they illegally sent him to Albania and left him on a mountainside.

The European court, based in Strasbourg, France, ruled that El-Masri's account was “established beyond reasonable doubt” and that Macedonia “had been responsible for his torture and ill-treatment both in the country itself and after his transfer to the U.S. authorities in the context of an extra-judicial rendition.”

It said the government of Macedonia violated El-Masri's rights repeatedly and ordered it to pay (EURO)60,000 ($78,500) in damages. Macedonia's Justice Ministry said it would enforce the court ruling and pay El-Masri the damages.

U.S. officials closed internal investigations into the El-Masri case two years ago, and the administration of President Barack Obama has distanced itself from some counterterrorism activities conducted under former President George W. Bush.

But several other legal cases are pending from Britain to Hong Kong involving people who say they were illegally detained in the CIA program. Its critics hope that Thursday's ruling will lead to court victories for other rendition victims and prevent future abuses.

Read full article.

Continue reading “Eagle: European Court Convicts CIA of Rendition, Torture & Sodomy — Many More Cases Starting to Come Together Against CIA”

2012/12/17

Yoda: TIME Magazine Gives Up Fact-Checking [ We Do Not Make This Stuff Up!]

Corruption, Cultural Intelligence, Idiocy, Ineptitude, IO Impotency, Media

Up, TIME is [Joke make, Yoda]

Time Gives Up on Factchecking: Corporate Media Can't Find a Way to Tell the Truth

PETER HART – Truthout.org

In October, the inevitable was announced: Struggling Newsweek magazine would be finished as a print publication as of the end of the year. But the last mass newsweekly left, Time, also made an announcement of sorts: It was out of the factchecking business.

Read full article.

2012/12/152012/12/15

SchwartzReport: Poisoning the Well – Federal Collusion with Industry to Pollute Natio’s Underground Water Supply

Corruption, Earth Intelligence, Government, Idiocy, Ineptitude

Injection Wells: The Hidden Risks of Pumping Waste Underground

Poisoning the Well: How the Feds Let Industry Pollute the Nation’s Underground Water Supply

Federal officials have given energy and mining companies permission to pollute aquifers in more than 1,500 places across the country, releasing toxic material into underground reservoirs that help supply more than half of the nation's drinking water.

In many cases, the Environmental Protection Agency has granted these so-called aquifer exemptions in Western states now stricken by drought and increasingly desperate for water.

EPA records show that portions of at least 100 drinking water aquifers have been written off because exemptions have allowed them to be used as dumping grounds.

“You are sacrificing these aquifers,” said Mark Williams, a hydrologist at the University of Colorado and a member of a National Science Foundation team studying the effects of energy development on the environment. “By definition, you are putting pollution into them. … If you are looking 50 to 100 years down the road, this is not a good way to go.”

As part of an investigation into the threat to water supplies from underground injection of waste, ProPublica set out to identify which aquifers have been polluted.

Read full article.

Phi Beta Iota: The ignorance of the US National Intelligence Council in endorsing fracking as a path to energy is breathtaking. $70 billion a year plus, and the National Intelligence Council has no idea that fracking causes earthquakes and contaminates scarce groundwater?

2012 Global Trends 2030: Review by Robert Steele — Report Lauds Fracking as Energy Solution, Disappoints on Multiple Fronts

Sir Richard Branson: Breaking the Taboo — Ending the War on People also known as the War on People

2012/12/072012/12/07

Dolphin: Autism Up, Sperm Down

07 Health, Commerce, Corruption, Earth Intelligence, Government, Idiocy

Connecting the dots….isn't that what intelligence is supposed to do?

Why Is Autism So Drastically on the Rise? An Environmental Horror Story

An investigation into the relationship between environmental poisons and human health is riveting — and terrifying.

If horror is your genre, environmental writer Brita Belli’s The Autism Puzzle, is the book for you. Her terrifying look at the chemicals we eat, drink and breathe is guaranteed to make your hair stand on end.

We should thank her for it.

Statistics released earlier this spring by the Centers for Disease Control revealed that one in 88 U.S. born toddlers has an autism spectral disorder—from the less severe Asperger’s Syndrome to the so-called classical form of the ailment. Worse, it’s not just a North American phenomenon; Belli also reports a 57 percent spike in Asia and Europe.

Read full article.

Russian men: an endangered species?

Continue reading “Dolphin: Autism Up, Sperm Down”

2012/12/062012/12/06

Lynn Wheler: NASA Adopts IC Security Standards, Loses 100 Scientists Doing Unclassified Work

Government, Idiocy

Security Obsession Drives 100 Scientists from NASA

Top Security Clearance Needed to Help Steer the Curiosity Rover?

EXTRACT 1:

Thanks to the zealous wackos at the Department of Homeland Security, back in 2007 during the latter part of the Bush administration an order went out that all workers at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena–an organization that is run under contract to NASA by the California Institute of Technology, had to be vetted for high security clearance in order to continue doing their jobs. Never mind that not one of them was or is engaged in secret activities (NASA is a rigorously non-military, scientific agency which not only publishes all its findings, but which invites the active participation of scientists from around the world). In order to continue working at JPL, even scientists who had been with NASA for decades were told they would need a high-level security badge just to enter the premises. To be issued that badge, they were told they would need to agree undergo an intensive FBI check that would look into their prior life history, right back to college.

Continue reading “Lynn Wheler: NASA Adopts IC Security Standards, Loses 100 Scientists Doing Unclassified Work”

2012/12/062012/12/06

Berto Jongman: Joshua Foust on Chaotic Intelligence Community

Corruption, Government, Idiocy, Ineptitude

Chaotic Intelligence Community

American Security Project Flashpoint Blog

posted by Joshua Foust on December 5, 2012 at 11:56 am

The Washington Post reported over the weekend that the Pentagon is sendinghundreds of spies overseas as part of its rapid expansion into espionage- an endeavor rivaling the CIA. The Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) will oversee this effort, expected to top the deployment of 1,600 agents worldwide. And it is the wrong approach.

Continue reading “Berto Jongman: Joshua Foust on Chaotic Intelligence Community”