Ineptitude – Page 54 – Public Intelligence Blog

This is one of the best critiques on neo-liberalism as an extreme ideology that I have read. It is long but well worth the investment in your time. On a personal note, I have long been offended by the neo-liberal hijacking of F.A. Hayek’s ideas, especially those on the relationship of central planning to the limits of information, which fit my empirical studies of the Pentagon's decision-making pathologies like a hand fits a glove. Yet, Pentagon spending is a subject that most neo-liberals, like Congressman Paul Ryan, refuse to countenance. Neo-liberals, led by Milton Freedman, have twisted Hayek’s ideas into an uber capitalist, free-market, quasi-religious dogma. Lehmann’s essay is an admirable evisceration of that extremism.

Chuck Spinney

Neoliberalism, the Revolution in Reverse

Chris Lehmann

The Baffler, No. 24, 2014

The neoliberal flight from public responsibility is actually a curiously instructive tale of strikingly other-than-intended consequences.

Read full article.

2014/07/022019/01/05

2014 Robert Steele On Defense Intelligence – Seven Strikes

Corruption, Director of National Intelligence et al (IC), DoD, Ineptitude, Military, Office of Management and Budget, Officers Call, Peace Intelligence, Threats, True Cost

On Defense Intelligence: Seven Strikes

I consider defense intelligence today to be incoherent and ineffective. It has no grasp of the totality of the threat; it is largely worthless in providing SecDef with evidence-based decision support relevant to strategy, policy, acquisition, and operations; and it does not help DoD within the Cabinet when decision-support is needed to keep the Department of State honest (on the Afghan run-off election, for example), or to make the case for Whole of Government (USG) alternatives to military employment, particularly in the critical peaceful preventive measures and post-war stabilization & reconstructions domains.

Continue reading “2014 Robert Steele On Defense Intelligence – Seven Strikes”

2014/06/262014/06/24

Berto Jongman: Insecticides put world food supplies at risk, say scientists

01 Agriculture, 03 Economy, 03 Environmental Degradation, 07 Health, 07 Other Atrocities, 11 Society, 12 Water, Commerce, Corruption, Earth Intelligence, Government, Idiocy, Ineptitude, IO Impotency

Insecticides put world food supplies at risk, say scientists

Regulations on pesticides have failed to prevent poisoning of almost all habitats, international team of scientists concludes

The world’s most widely used insecticides have contaminated the environment across the planet so pervasively that global food production is at risk, according to a comprehensive scientific assessment of the chemicals’ impacts.

The researchers compare their impact with that reported in Silent Spring, the landmark 1962 book by Rachel Carson that revealed the decimation of birds and insects by the blanket use of DDT and other pesticides and led to the modern environmental movement.

Continue reading “Berto Jongman: Insecticides put world food supplies at risk, say scientists”

2014/06/242014/06/24

SchwartzReport: It’s the 1% of the 1% …

03 Economy, 07 Other Atrocities, 10 Transnational Crime, 11 Society, Commerce, Corruption, Government, Ineptitude, Law Enforcement

Here is what I think is a correct assessment of the new global aristocracy that owns a growing percentage of the world's wealth, and wants more. We think of peasants as agricultural workers. But that is the past. In the present day it is increasingly ordinary workers — both blue and white collar. The wealth differential now is even greater than it was in the 14th century. Click through to see the very useful graphs.

How You, I, and Everyone Got the Top 1 Percent All Wrong
DEREK THOMPSON – The Atlantic

For years, I've been making the same embarrassing mistake about U.S. economic inequality. Sorry.

Continue reading “SchwartzReport: It's the 1% of the 1% …”

2014/06/222014/06/21

Owl: Are Neo-Cons Sparking a Nuclear War Over Ukraine? Plus Update on Russian Nuclear Capabilities

Civil Society, Commerce, Corruption, Ineptitude, Military

Ukraine, not Iraq, May Start a Very Short World War: Roberts

“Washington has been convinced by neoconservatives that Russian strategic nuclear forces are in run down and unprepared condition and are sitting ducks for attack. This false belief is based on out-of-date information, a decade old, such as the argument presented in “The Rise of U.S. Nuclear Primacy” by Keir A. Lieber and Daryl G. Press in the April 2006 issue of Foreign Affairs, a publication of the Council on Foreign Relations, an organization of American elites.

Regardless of the condition of Russian nuclear forces, the success of Washington’s first strike and degree of protection provided by Washington’s ABM shield against retaliation, the article I posted by Steven Starr, “The Lethality of Nuclear Weapons,” makes clear that nuclear war has no winners. Everyone dies.

Continue reading “Owl: Are Neo-Cons Sparking a Nuclear War Over Ukraine? Plus Update on Russian Nuclear Capabilities”

2014/06/212014/06/20

SchwartzReport: Public Faith in Congress Hits Historic Low

Corruption, Cultural Intelligence, Government, Ineptitude

A democracy in which over nine of every 10 people do not trust the government can not long endure. This is absolutely appalling. Click through to see the charts and tables which are very helpful.

Public Faith in Congress Falls Again, Hits Historic Low — 93 Per Cent of Americans Lack Confidence in Government
REBECCA RIFFKIN – The Gallup Organization

WASHINGTON, D.C. — Americans' confidence in Congress has sunk to a new low. Seven percent of Americans say they have “a great deal” or “quite a lot” of confidence in Congress as an American institution, down from the previous low of 10% in 2013. This confidence is starkly different from the 42% in 1973, the first year Gallup began asking the question.

2014/06/162014/06/15

Berto Jongman: GlobalPost Editor on 5 Political Crisis Threatening to Wreck the Global Economy and Life As We Know It…

Corruption, Government, Ineptitude

5 political crises that are threatening to wreck the global economy and life as we know it

Thomas Mucha, Editor

GlobalPost, 14 June 2014

BOSTON — Hi, America. We need to talk.

While you’ve been obsessing over who was unhappy at Kim Kardashian’s Florentine wedding or where Pitbull got his mom-capris in Brazil (I know, right?), some serious things have gone down in the real world.

We’re talking wreck-the-global-economy, rewrite-history kinds of things.

LIST ONLY:

1. Iraq and Syria: Two conflicts beat as one
2. China vs. Japan: Asia’s next great war?
3. The rise of Europe’s far right
4. Russia vs. Ukraine (and the rest of Europe): Back in the USSR?
5. Washington, DC: A snake pit of vitriolic ineptitude

Read full post.

Category: Ineptitude

Chuck Spinney: The Emptiness of Neo-Liberalism