Ineptitude – Page 116 – Public Intelligence Blog

300 Million Talons... — 300 Million Talons…

The White House Petition Site Is a Joke (and Also the Future of Democracy)

Megan Garber

The Atlantic, 16 January 2013

First of all, it should be said: Hahahahahahahaha. The White House — the seat of federal power in the United States, the infrastructure behind the leader of the free world, the place so powerful and notable that even Aaron Sorkin wrote about it — has been vanquished by a Death Star.

Well, pretty much. In September 2011, the White House launched “We the People,” an online initiative designed to bring a digital spin to citizens' right to petition the government. The site allowed citizens to start and spread petitions, promising that any entreaties that received more than 5,000 signatures would receive consideration — in the form of an “official response” — from the White House. And the site enjoyed steady growth — so much so that, in October 2011, the White House upped the number of signatures required to receive an official response from 5,000 to 25,000. In late 2012, however, the site — driven in part by petitions to allow a selection of states to secede from the Union and to, yep, construct an $850,000,000,000,000,000, Star Wars-style Death Star — saw a surge. Both in terms of the number of users it registered (2.4 million) and signatures it collected (4.9 million), but also in terms of the number of requests it generated. The last two months of 2012, apparently, saw some 73,000 new petitions.

Continue reading “Eagle: White House Petition Site a Joke — and the Future”

2013/01/132013/01/13

Anthony Judge: Flatulence is a Problem Aired Resmelling the stench of past undertakings (personal, organizational, and national)

Corruption, Idiocy, Ineptitude

Flatulence is a Problem Aired: Resmelling the stench of past undertakings

Introduction

The third edition of the Encyclopedia of World Problems and Human Potential (1990) was reviewed for The Guardian by John Vidal under the title Flatulence is a Problem Aired (The Guardian, 7 February 1992). The review was introduced by the phrase: John Vidal finds the authors of a definitive guide to all the world's ills treading an ever thinner line between the sublime and ridiculous. The author of the review is a renowned editor on environmental matters, most notably for The Guardian. At that time the review could be seen as a highly skillful journalistic exercise in what has since been recognized as characteristic of negative campaigning — although the intention in so framing the undertaking was unclear at the time.

Continue reading “Anthony Judge: Flatulence is a Problem Aired Resmelling the stench of past undertakings (personal, organizational, and national)”

2013/01/12

Berto Jongman: US Spends 7.4 Billion a Year on Bio-Defense, to Zero Effect

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

Bio-Terror & Infectious Disease Outbreak: Detection Technologies and Global Markets – 2012 Edition

The US Bipartisan Bio-Detection 2011 Report Card Status Evaluation
(Source: The US Bipartisan WMD Terrorism Research Center, October 2011 Bio Response Report Card)

Events of the recent decade confirm that the threats of bio-terrorism and infectious disease outbreaks are real. Attacks such as the 2001 Anthrax scare, the 2004 Ricin letters, the 2003 SARS and 2009 H1N1 outbreaks have driven governments to increase their bio-surveillance budgets. Public healthcare and HLS agencies' urgent need to establish an early and reliable bio-surveillance detection infrastructure will drive the market onto a much higher trajectory than ever before. We forecast that the cumulative 2012-2016 market (including: systems sale, consumables, upgrades and service) will reach $22.8 billion.

The recent year that saw the seventh review round of the Biological and Toxic Weapons Convention, demonstrated that demand for biosecurity remains high. As developed countries continue to refine their organizational and technological approach to potential bio-terror and disease outbreak threats, many key emerging markets are also ramping up programs to acquire solutions that provide early outbreak-attack detection. These will require the shortening of bio-attack alarm response time and the proliferation of 3^rd generation cost-effective bio-detection technologies and reagent-less detection assays.

In contrast to the US colossal spending of $67 billion on biodefense programs during the 2001-2011 period, the US bipartisan WMD Terror Response Center report card (September 2011) graded the world's leading “US bio-detection and attribution programs” as the Achilles heel of the US BioWatch program. It received a score ranging from “meets minimal expectations” to a catastrophic “fails to meet expectations” (see table above). It stated that “Although naturally occurring disease remains a serious threat, a thinking enemy armed with these same pathogens, or with multi–drug resistant or synthetically engineered pathogens could produce catastrophic consequences“.

Over the next five years, we forecast that, led by the US, Germany, France, China, Japan and India, the global bio-detection market (including systems sale, service, upgrades and consumables) will reach $5.6 billion by 2016.

Continue reading “Berto Jongman: US Spends 7.4 Billion a Year on Bio-Defense, to Zero Effect”

2013/01/11

Berto Jongman: US to Fund Rare Earths Institute — Doing the Wrong Thing Righter Once Again

Academia, Commerce, Corruption, Earth Intelligence, Government, Ineptitude

US to build $120m rare earth research institute

By Katia Moskvitch

BBC News, 11 January 2012

The US Department of Energy is giving $120m (£75m) to set up a new research centre charged with developing new methods of rare earth production.

Rare earths are 17 chemically similar elements crucial to making many hi-tech products, such as phones and PCs.

The Critical Materials Institute will be located in Ames, Iowa.

The US wants to reduce its dependency on China, which produces more than 95% of the world's rare earth elements, and address local shortages.

According to the US Geological Survey, there may be deposits of rare earths in 14 US states.

Besides being used for hi-tech gadgets, the elements are also crucial for manufacturing low-carbon resources such as wind turbines, solar panels and electric cars, said David Danielson, the US assistant secretary for renewable energy.

“The Critical Materials Institute will bring together the best and brightest research minds from universities, national laboratories and the private sector to find innovative technology solutions that will help us avoid a supply shortage that would threaten our clean energy industry as well as our security interests,” he said in a statement.

Rare earth elements are also used for military applications, such as advanced optics technologies, radar and radiation detection equipment, and advanced communications systems, according to a 2011 research report by the US Government Accountability Office.

Recycling issue

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Phi Beta Iota: An Open Source Agency (OSA) at IOC $125M and FOC $3B, would be a vastly better investment. Once again pork finds a home and a new stove-pipe is being built.

Rare earths

Continue reading “Berto Jongman: US to Fund Rare Earths Institute — Doing the Wrong Thing Righter Once Again”

2013/01/112013/01/11

NIGHTWATCH: Afghanistan – Panetta Postures, Taliban Waits

08 Wild Cards, Corruption, Government, Idiocy, Ineptitude, Military

Afghanistan: US Defense Secretary Panetta had talks with Afghan President Hamid Karzai at the Pentagon on Thursday. Panetta told the media the two countries were “at the last chapter” in their effort to rebuild Afghanistan's institutions and security. Panetta said, “We've come a long way towards a shared goal of establishing a nation that you and we can be proud of, one that never again becomes a safe haven for terrorism.”

Comment: Panetta was playing to the gallery… or the mainstream American media. The situation in Afghanistan is not so rosy that anyone should be proud or thumping his or her chest or doing a victory lap.

Continue reading “NIGHTWATCH: Afghanistan – Panetta Postures, Taliban Waits”

2013/01/082013/05/18

Marcus Aurelius: Fact-Checking CIA Fact-Checking 0 Dark 30 [with Robert Steele Fact-Checking Both] 1.2

07 Other Atrocities, 08 Proliferation, 09 Terrorism, Corruption, Cultural Intelligence, Director of National Intelligence et al (IC), Government, Ineptitude, IO Deeds of War, IO Impotency

Fact-Checking the CIA's Fact-Check on ‘Zero Dark Thirty

By J.K. Trotter | The Atlantic Wire – Fri, Dec 28, 2012

“The CIA is a lot different than Hollywood portrays it to be,” reads an official explainer issued today by the Central Intelligence Agency — a thinly veiled attempt to continue debunking Zero Dark Thirty, the controversial Oscar favorite that its director admittedly hates. Referring to James Bond, the fictional MI6 agent, depictions of “shootouts and high speed chases,” and scenes of “CIA officers chasing terrorists through the American heartland,” the memo goes on to try and dispel an array of “myths” pertaining to the agency's operations, from its impact on foreign policy to its ability to spy on Americans. The effort follows a December 21 letter addressed to CIA employees from the agency's acting director, Michael Morrell, concerning the “artistic license” of Zero Dark Thirty. Today's release touches on the same themes: whether the CIA of our popular imagination corresponds to the CIA of reality, and how movies like Zero Dark Thirty (which isn't name-checked directly) blur the distinction between fact and fantasy. Should you believe the CIA's interpretation of Hollywood? We break down each agency claim with actual details from the movies — and Homeland, obviously.

Below the line: each of the five “myths” and Robert Steele's “best truth” answer, Steve Coll's negative review of film.

Continue reading “Marcus Aurelius: Fact-Checking CIA Fact-Checking 0 Dark 30 [with Robert Steele Fact-Checking Both] 1.2”

2013/01/072013/01/07

Chuck Spinney: The Real Challenges Facing the Next Secretary of Defense, Robert Steele Comments

Corruption, Government, Ineptitude, Military

No Guts, No Glory

The Real Challenges Facing the Next Secretary of Defense

FRANKLIN C. SPINNEY,
This essay appeared in Counterpunch (12 Dec 2012) and Time's Battleland (3 Jan 2013)

EXTRACT:

The problem is not just a strategic one of extracting our forces with dignity; nor is it a political one of fingering who is to blame, although there is plenty of blame to go around. It stems from deep institutional roots that reveal a need for reform in our military bureaucracies and particularly our leadership selection policies.

That is because the next Secretary of Defense must deal with the consequences of a strategic oversight that was made by and approved at the highest professional levels of the American military establishment — a plan which it then imposed on its weak and insecure political leaders. This suggests a question: Will the new defense secretary succumb to business as usual by sweeping the dysfunctional institutional causes of the Afghan debacle under the rug or have the courage and wisdom to use this sorry affair as a reason to clean out the Pentagon’s Augean Stables?

. . . . . . . . .

A far more significant challenge will be posed by the need to sort out the programmatic chaos in the Pentagon’s hugely bloated defense budget, which, while not unrelated to the Afghan debacle, is caused primarily by out-of-control institutional prerogatives and bureaucratic game playing. Notwithstanding its bloat, the current defense budget plan cannot modernize the military’s weapons inventories on a timely basis; nor can it insure our shrinking, aging equipment will be maintained in a state of combat readiness, while providing sufficient funds for training troops. Most importantly, the Pentagon’s accounting systems are a shambles. The Pentagon’s budget and program planning books can not even pass the most basic constitutional requirements for accountability, much less provide the management information needed to fix the aforementioned modernization, force structure, and readiness problems.

As I explained here and here, these dysfunctional problems are connected and have deep behavioral roots. Fixing these problems will require harmonizing and reining in the disparate factions making up the dysfunctional political-economy of the Military – Industrial – Congressional Complex — a heretofore intractable problem President Eisenhower first warned America about in his farewell address in January 1961 (note: the reference to Congress was included in the first draft of his speech but subsequently dropped).

What I find depressing is that not one of these pressing issues has been the subject of speculations about the choice of a new defense secretary. Au contraire, the press has been obsessed with the lobbying concerns of the discredited neocons on the right who helped to create Afghan and Iraqi messes, proponents of continuing American empire in the middle (who are now promoting our intervention in Syria and the budget busting pivot to the Pacific), and gender balancers on the left.

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