Ineptitude – Page 37 – Public Intelligence Blog

The era of predatory bureaucratization – An interview with David Graeber

David Graeber is an anthropologist and a well-known anarchist figure. He was one of the initiators of the Occupy movement in 2011. He is the author of a major essay, Debt, the First 5,000 Years. I met him in Paris for the release of his latest book, The Utopia of Rules: On Technology, Stupidity, and the Secret Joys of Bureaucracy.

EXTRACT

…social movements are not about seizing power right away: it’s about changing the way we think about politics.

…feudalism. That’s what we have today: a fusion of public and private bureaucracies whose purpose is to create more and more debt that will then be the object of various forms of speculation.

2016/04/242016/04/22

Marcus Aurelius: Army Heavy Drop Failures

Ineptitude, Military

Watch three (3) Army High Mobility Multipurpose Wheeled Vehicles (“Humvees”) freefall into the Drop Zone after separating from their airdrop platforms following parachute canopy deployments during a 173d Airborne Brigade exercise at Hohenfels, Federal Republic of Germany on/about 11 April 2016.

Open Facebook Video (2 Minutes)

Investigation(s) reportedly underway, perhaps concentrating on identifying who captured the embarrassing video.

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2016/04/242016/04/22

Steven Aftergood: CRS on Cross-Cutting Intelligence Issues

Corruption, Government, Ineptitude, Peace Intelligence

CROSS-CUTTING INTELLIGENCE ISSUES, AND MORE FROM CRS

A new report from the Congressional Research Service raises the possibility that polygraph testing of intelligence employees could be phased out in favor of “continuous evaluation” (CE), i.e. the automated monitoring of financial, criminal and other databases.

The notion was suggested in a CRS overview of selected intelligence policy issues, including budget management, the quality of analysis, big data, workforce diversity, global coverage, and transparency. The new CRS report, written by Anne Daugherty Miles, does not make recommendations, but instead presents a series of questions for congressional consideration, such as:

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2016/04/182016/04/16

Berto Jongman: US Military Stockpiles Around the World — Easy Pickings….

Corruption, Idiocy, Ineptitude, Military

Pentagon Setting Up Military Stockpiles Around World Without Risk Checks

The US Department of Defense is failing to provide risk assessments in its prepositioning of equipment including weapons in Europe and around the world, a Government Accountability Office (GAO) report said.

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2016/04/062016/04/05

Berto Jongman: Kim Philby Secret Stasi Video — How He Did It, How He Got Away with It — Never Confess, Arrogance is Their Achilles Heel

Government, Ineptitude

Kim Philby, British double agent, reveals all in secret video

By Gordon Corera Security correspondent, BBC News, 4 April 2016

The tape is of Kim Philby giving a secret lecture to the Stasi, the East German Intelligence Service, in 1981. It is the first time the ex-MI6 officer can be seen talking about his life as a spy from his recruitment to his escape.

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2016/04/062016/04/04

Jean Lievens: How Austerity Has Crippled Europe

03 Economy, Corruption, Government, Ineptitude

How Austerity Has Crippled the European Economy – In Numbers

Thomas Fazi, Social Europe, 31 March 2016

Europe’s post-crisis response – consisting of a combination of fiscal austerity, neoliberal structural reforms and expansionary monetary policies – has unambiguously failed. In early 2016 – eight years after the outbreak of the financial crisis – the eurozone’s overall real GDP was still below the pre-crisis peak (March 2008). The Greek economy was 27.6 per cent smaller. Spain’s was 4.5 per cent smaller. Portugal’s was 6.5 per cent smaller. Even those countries with above-average eurozone growth were not performing very well: Germany, for example, was only 5.5 per cent larger than it was in March 2008, while France was only 2.7 per cent larger. Meanwhile, most of the world has returned to, or surpasses, pre-crisis GDP levels.

2016/04/032016/04/03

Thomas Leo Briggs: CIA Subpar Spies Deja Vu

Government, Ineptitude

In relation to Bryan Dean Wright: CIA’s Problem – Subpar Spies I find it interesting to read what Bryan Dean Wright has written about the CIA and its recruitment of A and B students, especially since I published something very much like that in 2009 in the final chapter of my book, Cash on Delivery: CIA Special Operations During the Secret War in Laos. The final chapter contains what I called Briggs’ Axiom, a theory I often described to colleagues in the 1980s and 1990s. Mr. Wright and I are in agreement.

Mr. Wright writes:

“The answer: “Well, think of the students that you knew in school. We can’t retain the ‘A’ or ‘B’ students… they eventually quit in frustration because of too many bad managers and too much bureaucracy. So… we look for the ‘C’ students now.”

The CIA had started hiring average.

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Category: Ineptitude

Jean Lievens: David Graeber on Predatory Bureaucratization