Ineptitude – Page 74 – Public Intelligence Blog

2013/10/02

Seena Sharp: Fishing for New Customers [Not Something the Traditional Intelligence Communities Have Ever Considered]

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

Fishing For New Customers

Nearly every product or service has the potential to sell to multiple target audiences, but most companies focus only on their core customers. Isn't it time to play the field a little?

Back in the 1980s, Plano plastic tackle boxes were a must for fishing enthusiasts. When game show hostess Vanna White was photographed with her tackle box full of cosmetics, Plano began making Caboodles, colorful versions of the boxes. Within five years the new customers were buying more than the fishing crowd ever did. Does this count as “out of the box” thinking?

The Caboodles story is no anomaly; here are more:

Guns and Doses: The pellets for paintball sports use the same gelcap casings featured in prescription and over-the-counter medications – and the pellets are made by the same manufacturers.
Puccini, Pygmalion, and popcorn: The New York Metropolitan Opera House and the U.K.’s National Theatre Live film their world-class productions for screening at movie theaters globally. The arts organizations get much-needed funds and the theaters get new patrons.
Leveraging 101: Most community colleges have the facilities, equipment, and staff for workforce training and retraining, so some companies are partnering with their local campus to offer a specialized curriculum just for their employees.
A classic case: Pelican Products‘ watertight, bomb-proof cases are perfect for transporting weapons, electronics, and engines. Thanks to new temperature control features, the cases are now also in demand for transporting blood, vaccines and other sensitive substances.
Boardroom service: Ritz-Carlton Hotels, known around the world for extraordinary customer service, launched The Ritz-Carlton Leadership Center in 2000 to teach its philosophy and techniques to organizations in every sector. Notable clients include Apple and the U.S. Navy.

How can you look at your products, services, technologies, skills, and facilities with fresh eyes to find ways to grow your company and create value for new customers? Get help! Sharp Market Intelligence identifies unknown “other” markets and customers who are already buying your offerings but don’t fit your customer profile.

SharpInsights are byte-size bits of food for thought for executives. You are welcome to forward this message to colleagues, tweet or reprint it, as long as you credit us and link to the source: http://www.sharpmarket.com Want more SharpInsights? Visit the archives.

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2013/10/02

Marcus Aurelius: The Beginning of the End for Washington

Civil Society, Corruption, Cultural Intelligence, Government, Idiocy, Ineptitude

Following from Defense One, a relatively new newsletter. I'm not a political scientist, but much of what's said below seems reasonable to me. I would tell you that the current situation clearly tells us that our Constitutional republic has failed, probably irrevocably so and that we need a lawful Constitutional convention in order to rebuild the country and our Constitution from the ground up, line by line, issue by issue.

The Beginning of the End for Washington

By Ron Fournier

October 1, 2013

Step back. Try for a moment to extrapolate what a government shutdown and discredited U.S. currency could do to the economy and the public's faith in government. Think beyond next year's congressional elections or even the 2016 presidential race. Factor in existing demographic and social trends. I did, and this is what I concluded:

1. The Republican Party is marginalizing itself to the brink of extinction.

2. President Obama can't capitulate to GOP demands to unwind the fairly legislated and litigated Affordable Care Act. To do so would be political malpractice and a poor precedent for future presidents.

3. Despite the prior two points, Obama and his party won't escape voters' wrath. Democrats are less at fault but not blameless.

4. This may be the beginning of the end of Washington as we know it. A rising generation of pragmatic, non-ideological voters is appalled by the dysfunctional leadership of their parents and grandparents. History may consider October 2013 their breaking point. There will come a time when Millennials aren't just mad as hell; they won't take it anymore.

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2013/10/01

Berto Jongman: Bridget Rose Nolan’s Dissertation on Information Sharing and Collaboration in the US IC: An Ethnogrpahic Study of the National Counterterrorism Center

Cultural Intelligence, Government, Ineptitude, IO Impotency

INFORMATION SHARING AND COLLABORATION IN THE UNITED STATES INTELLIGENCE COMMUNITY: AN ETHNOGRAPHIC STUDY OF THE
NATIONAL COUNTERTERRORISM CENTER

Bridget Rose Nolan

A DISSERTATION in Sociology Presented to the Faculties of the University of Pennsylvania in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy

On balance, then, the combination of structural and cultural issues discussed in this dissertation—the role of status, the flow of information, and the tension between secrecy and openness—suggests that NCTC has not achieved the information sharing and collaboration envisioned by the 9/11 Commission.

Source

2013/09/302013/09/30

Penguin: Book Review by Andrew Bacevich — Thank You For Your Service [The Unraveling]

07 Health, 11 Society, Civil Society, Corruption, Cultural Intelligence, Director of National Intelligence et al (IC), DoD, Government, Idiocy, Ineptitude, IO Deeds of War, Military, Officers Call, Peace Intelligence, Threats

Book review: ‘Thank You for Your Service’ by David Finkel

By Andrew Bacevich

Andrew J. Bacevich teaches at Boston University. His new book is “Breach of Trust: How Americans Failed Their Soldiers and Their Country.”

Nominally a sequel to The Good Soldiers, his 2009 account of an American infantry battalion at war in Iraq, David Finkel’s new book actually serves as a perfect companion to George Packer’s recent bestseller, The Unwinding. Like Packer, Finkel examines the human detritus left in the wake of fraudulent promises and collapsed illusions. In The Unwinding, Packer contemplates the fate of those victimized by cataclysmic economic change. In Thank You for Your Service, Finkel looks at those victimized by egregious military malpractice.

The post-industrial, high-tech, information-age economy unveiled near the end of the 20th century supposedly offered a template for permanent prosperity. The Great Recession upended such expectations. Although some Americans have gotten very rich indeed, far larger numbers of ordinary citizens find themselves unemployed and unemployable. With impressive sensitivity, Packer tells their story.

Concocted at about the same time, a post-industrial, high-tech, information-age approach to waging war supposedly offered a template for assured victory. Iraq and Afghanistan have shredded such pretensions. Although some high-ranking military and civilian officials found ways to cash in, far larger numbers of ordinary soldiers (and their families) suffered, many of them grievously. In painful, intimate and at times almost voyeuristic detail, Finkel tells their story.

More specifically, Finkel, a reporter with The Washington Post, attends to what he calls the “after war.” His concern is with the soldiers who return from the war zone bearing wounds — and with the loved ones on whom those wounds also become imprinted. Above all, he is concerned with wounds that may not be fully visible: the post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), traumatic brain injury and related conditions that affect roughly a half-million younger veterans. Make that a half-million and counting.

To translate this disturbing statistic into flesh and blood, Finkel checks in on some of the soldiers featured in his previous book. What he finds is anger, anxiety, shame, depression, guilt, sleeplessness, self-abuse, spousal abuse, child abuse, alcohol abuse, drug abuse and suicidal tendencies, sometimes acted on, sometimes not. Shouting matches, crying jags and bizarre behavior along with guns and two-pack-a-day smoking habits abound, but not much in the way of useful therapy. Of one soldier, Finkel writes: “He began to take sleeping pills to fall asleep and another kind of pill to get back to sleep when he woke up. He took other pills, too, some for pain, others for anxiety. He began to drink so much vodka that his skin smelled of it, and then he started mentioning suicide.”

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2013/09/30

Penguin: VA Pushing Pills and Getting Vets Hooked on Opiates

04 Inter-State Conflict, 07 Health, 07 Other Atrocities, 11 Society, Corruption, Government, Idiocy, Ineptitude, Military, Officers Call

VA Pushing Pills and Getting Vets Hooked on Opiates

The VA is prescribing 270 percent more opiates to veterans than it was 12 years ago, sometimes pushing the drugs to known addicts who later overdose, writes Aaron Glantz.

This story aired on Reveal, a new public radio show from The Center for Investigative Reporting and PRX.

Before dawn, a government van picked up paratrooper Jeffrey Waggoner for the five-hour drive to a Department of Veterans Affairs hospital in southern Oregon. His orders: detox from a brutal addiction to painkillers.

He had only the clothes on his back, his watch, an MP3 player, and a two-page pain contract the army made him sign, a promise to get clean.

But instead of keeping Waggoner away from his vice, medical records show the VA hospital in Roseburg kept him so doped up that he could barely stay awake. Then, inexplicably, the VA released him for the weekend with a cocktail of 19 prescription medications, including 12 tablets of highly addictive oxycodone.

Three hours later, Waggoner, 32, was dead of a drug overdose, slumped in a heap in front of his room at the Sleep Inn motel.

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2013/09/292014/03/28

Owl: Hedges, Others, Predict US Financial Collapse in 2014

Commerce, Corruption, Government, Idiocy, Ineptitude

Collapse is Soon, says Hedges, and Others Predict it for 2014

“It is estimated that total derivative exposure of the financial system is between one quadrillion and one and a half quadrillion. A quadrillion is 1,000 trillion dollars and it has largely collapsed.The entire Gross Domestic Product (GDP) of all the world’s countries in 2011 was approximately 77 trillion dollars. GDP is an economic term for everything that is produced for sale. The American middle class is being asked to bear the burden of the entire derivatives market collapse which totals over 16 times the net value of the entire planet. No amount of bailouts can ever cover the loss. This is simply the bankers way of transferring what is left of middle class wealth before the final collapse

Where do you think the bail out money went? Ask yourself why so many corporate heads are building homes overseas? Why did George Bush build a 100,000 acre ranch in Paraguay? Why is NORTHCOM, a combat organization, is engaged in urban riot control training? Why did DHS purchase 2.2 billion rounds of ammunition to go with their 2700 armored personnel carriers? Even the National Weather Service has purchased million of rounds of ammunition. Why are the Russians training on American soil with FEMA in a bilateral agreement signed by Obama? Why are we seeing one disaster drill after another being carried out in this country? Here is a partial list of disaster drills being carried between September 25-November 13th.

Port of Houston Ran Simulation Drill for ‘Dirty Bomb’ Attack Sept. 25

Maine Hosted Secret Multi-Agency Disaster Drill Sept. 25

Great ShakeOut Earthquake Drill Set Oct. 17

More Than 1,000 Banks Plan National Cyber-Attack Drill Oct. 16-17, Oct. 23-24

Quantum Dawn’ Is a Cyber-Attack Bank Drill –

GridEx2 Nov. 13-14

The central bankers know that no amount of Quantitative Easing can pay for the hard assets that were lost in order to collateralize the derivatives. They have no option but to collapse the system and start over, but before they do, they are going to steal everything that is not nailed down. This is why in preparation of this move to collapse the system, they are obtaining as many hard assets as possible. This is why the Federal Reserve has been printing 40 billion dollars per month for the sole purpose of purchasing mortgage backed securities. This is why central bankers are under orders from the Bank of International Settlement which has ordered its rank and file central bankers from each country to greatly minimize loans in order to limit exposure when the collapse occurs. This is why the MERS mortgage fraud, in which millions of people are having their houses stolen through the creation of phony titles, continues unabated. This is why the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that once a depositor puts their money in the bank, the bank owns the money. This is why Treasury Secretary Lew began to “borrow” against federal pensions late last spring. This is why DHS, the IRS et al are preparing to go to war with the American people as they arm to the teeth. This is why the foreign troops are here. You are on the Titanic and you are going down. Still not convinced? Then explain Cyprus, Greece, Poland and now Panama where the TPTB are stealing pensions and bank accounts and you don‘t think it can happen to you because you are an American?”

More;

Game Over: Total Collapse is Imminent

2013/09/282013/09/29

Berto Jongman: Seymour Hersh on OBL Raid Story One Big Lie + Raid Meta-RECAP

07 Other Atrocities, 08 Wild Cards, Corruption, Cultural Intelligence, Government, Idiocy, Ineptitude, IO Deeds of War, Military, Officers Call, Peace Intelligence

Seymour Hersh: Bin Laden Raid “One Big Lie”

Pulitzer-prize wining journalist slams “pathetic” US media for failing to challenge White House

Paul Joseph Watson
Infowars.com
September 27, 2013

Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Seymour Hersh says that the raid which killed Osama Bin Laden in 2011 is “one big lie” and that “not one word” of the Obama administration’s narrative on what happened is true.

In a wide-ranging interview published today by the Guardian, Hersh savages the US media for failing to challenge the White House on a whole host of issues, from NSA spying, to drone attacks, to aggression against Syria.

On the subject of the Navy Seal raid that supposedly resulted in the death of the Al-Qaeda terror leader, Hersh remarked, “Nothing’s been done about that story, it’s one big lie, not one word of it is true.”

Hersh added that the Obama administration habitually lies but they continue to do so because the press allows them to get away with it.

“It’s pathetic, they are more than obsequious, they are afraid to pick on this guy [Obama],” Hersh told the Guardian.

Continue reading “Berto Jongman: Seymour Hersh on OBL Raid Story One Big Lie + Raid Meta-RECAP”