If You Have the Cojones to Rob The Feds, the Feds Have The Money to Give You – Lots of It
“A Maryland woman pleaded guilty Tuesday to charges related to setting up at least 15 false businesses in six states that received government contracts despite often being registered to people who did not exist. The businesses subcontracted all the work to other companies, then took the federal dollars without paying the companies doing the work. Larayne Whitehead, 34, of Clinton, Md., agreed to forfeit $2.4 million in illegal proceeds and a silver Audi.
Bradley Manning did everything but wear a sign saying “Timebomb waiting to explode!
Michael Farrell
Veterans Today, 14 August 2013
EXTRACT
The subject of the email was “My problem.”“I’ve had signs of it for a very long time,” Bradley Manning wrote. “It caused conditions within my family. I thought a career in the military would get rid of it. … But it’s not going away, it’s haunted me more and more as I get older.”There was a photograph attached. Sitting in a car, looking anguished, Manning stares into the camera’s lens. He is wearing a blonde wig and makeup. –Matt Sledge, the Huffington Post, 8-13-2013
In my post on July 31, I argued that the chain of command was largely responsible for the entire debacle ending in the release of documents. It appears based on testimony that not only was I right, it was worse than I thought. Those of us who were in leadership roles during that era and did not want to engage in witch hunts found the “Don’t ask, don’t tell” policy not that easy to enforce. This was a problem with a lot of issues by the way — people engaging in private behavior that the overall society was willing to accept, but that violated the Uniform Code of Military Justice. When a soldier came in to talk to me for some “personal problem,” I didn’t always begin with reading them their rights but I had the card handy just in case. But, while it did not happen, I knew exactly what I would do if someone came in and announced that they were gay–I’d make certain that they knew that by telling me they were in fact asking to be discharged, and then I’d be on the phone to the CSM and the legal clerk to start the paperwork. Nothing personal…I didn’t care, but the rules were pretty straightforward. And, in my leadership roles, I wasn’t dealing with a lot of soldiers who had clearances above Secret.
The free ride is over. Google seems to have decided it is time to make the most of AdWords, the Tutorspree Blog illustrates in, “How Google is Killing Organic Search.” The post begins by praising the Google of the past which, writer Aaron Harris accurately observes, “won search by providing the best organic results users had ever seen.” Since then, though, the company’s profit motive has been slowly strangling unpaid, organic search results.
The post begins with an visual presentation. Harris took screen shots of some different Googley searches and calculated the percentage of each results page devoted to organic results. The low numbers (all under 15 percent) are particularly galling, he says, for local business owners who bought into Google’s promises that well-structured pages would mean high visibility. The post concludes:
“Google is building a new version of the search engine that made it great. This time, however, it is a search engine exclusive to the garden of Google products. If you compete with Google in any way, you’re in its crosshairs. Your chances of ranking high enough to garner traffic are virtually nil and getting smaller.
“The scariest part of this is that, if you sell something using the internet, regardless of whether or not you see yourself as a ‘local’ business – or think you’re competing with Google – Google sees you as competition. Searching for ‘Camera’ or ‘Buy a Dress Shirt’ gets you a nearly identical split of screen real estate as that of ‘local’ searches. Nearly everything leads back to a Google product except for an ever-decreasing amount of ‘Organic’ real estate.”
I wish I could say I was surprised, but Google is in business to make money, after all. They do seem to be more directly focused on that goal lately. Will the approach pay off, or will users turn to other search alternatives?
Phi Beta Iota: Long long ago, in a land far far away, this slide created by Stephen E. Arnold was modified by Robert David Steele to add the red bit at the bottom — a truth that was discovered by Brother Stephen, but a truth he was reluctant to spell out for an increasingly dumbed down drugged up public. Google is massively well-funded fraud. They are the Goldman Sachs of cyberspace. The US Government is a village idiot in this domain, the laughingstock of the world, and particularly of the Israelis, Chinese, Iranians, and Russians. INTEGRITY MATTERS.
Aircraft carriers:feedback. A Brilliant and well-informed Reader reminded that Spain and Italy also have built aircraft carriers, making a total of seven builders. A search of the web indicates that nine navies have aircraft carriers and most have trouble doing so. Another Brilliant naval warfare expert and Reader calls them “big targets.” Feedback welcome.
A CRISIS OF TRUST AND CULTURAL INCOMPATIBILITY: A Red Team Study of Mutual Perceptions of Afghan National Security Force Personnel and U.S. Soldiers in Understanding and Mitigating the Phenomena of ANSF – Committed Fratricide – Murders
May 12, 2011
Jeffrey Bordin, Ph.D. [Major (P) U.S. Army]
N2KL Red Team Political and Military Behavioral Scientist
jeffrey.bordin@afghan.swa.army.mil
EXTRACT
Unfortunately, the rapidly growing fratricide – murder trend committed by ANSF personnel against ISAF members is a valid COIN measure of the ineffectiveness in our efforts in stabilizing Afghanistan, developing a legitimate and effective
government, battling the insurgency, gaining the loyalty, respect and friendship of the Afghans, building the ANSFs into legitimate and functional organizations, and challenges the efficacy of the ‘partnering’ concept . This is all the more a paradox given ISAF’s assumption of and planned reliance for the ANSFs to be able to take over the security burden before it can disengage from this grossly prolonged conflict. This study shows that certain behaviors and policies (such as night raids and home searches
that directly involve U.S. Soldiers) have generated a great deal of animosity among much of the Afghan civilian populace as well as with many ANSF personnel that impedes the overall strategic effort. Such practices are simply unacceptable if ISAF is to be
even marginally successful here.
With a diplomatic attitude more reminiscent of a spoiled brat grabbing his toys and leaving the room, US President Obama has resorted to diplomatic snubs and childish criticisms of Russian behavior as if the Russian leaders were small children.
In a press conference Obama described the Russian President as having a “slouch…looking like that bored schoolboy in the back of the classroom.” Yet behind the childish form of the latest White House refusal to meet President Putin before the G-20 St. Petersburg Summit is a grim reality:
Washington is rapidly losing its way to impose its will in the world on multiple fronts and the Putin snub is an impotent reflection of that loss of power. The real issues in US-Russian relations go far deeper.
