Ineptitude – Page 98 – Public Intelligence Blog

2013/05/09

Marcus Aureleus: From 1 to 10 Camouflage Patterns – Study in Washington Redundancy & Waste — USAF Denies Spending $500M on Digital Cloak to Create Invisible Airmen

Corruption, Government, Idiocy, Ineptitude, Military

With 10 patterns, U.S. military branches out on camouflage front

Washington Post, Published: May 8, 2013

In 2002, the U.S. military had just two kinds of camouflage uniforms. One was green, for the woods. The other was brown, for the desert.Then things got strange.

Today, there is one camouflage pattern just for Marines in the desert. There is another just for Navy personnel in the desert. The Army has its own “universal” camouflage pattern, which is designed to work anywhere. It also has another one just for Afghanistan, where the first one doesn’t work.

Even the Air Force has its own unique camouflage, used in a new Airman Battle Uniform. But it has flaws. So in Afghanistan, airmen are told not to wear it in battle.

In just 11 years, two kinds of camouflage have turned into 10. And a simple aspect of the U.S. government has emerged as a complicated and expensive case study in federal duplication.

Duplication is one of Washington’s most expensive traditions: Multiple agencies do the same job at the same time, and taxpayers pay billions for the government to repeat itself.

The habit remains stubbornly hard to break, even in an era of austerity. There are, for instance, at least 209 federal programs to improve science and math skills. There are 16 programs that teach personal finance.

Read full article.

Phi Beta Iota: The above do not include the range of uniforms in black, brown, green, blue, and white. There is absolutely no truth to allegation that the USAF has spent $500M on an invisibility cloak for airmen. That is a DARPA project, ranked slightly higher in priority than the automated dog. Meanwhile, OmB (the Management is silent) continues to punch numbers without actually thinking about substance.

DuckDuckGo / DARPA invisibility cloak

2013/05/08

Berto Jongman: Robert Fisk: We Might As Well Name Our Newspapers ‘Officials Say’

Corruption, Ineptitude, IO Impotency, Media, YouTube

He calls it the “Cancer of American Journalism”

Robert Fisk: We Might As Well Name Our Newspapers ‘Officials Say'

May 7, 2013

Watch the full 20-minute interview with Robert Fisk on Democracy Now! at http://owl.li/kN9jD. Longtime Middle East correspondent of the British newspaper The Independent, Robert Fisk, tells Democracy Now! that journalists covering Syria and other conflicts are too often relying on anonymous government sources for their stories.

ROBERT FISK: Oddly enough, you have to be in Syria to realize how mad it is. There's an odd thing that when you actually are traveling around Syria — Latakia, Tartus, Damascus and further north than Latakia — and you listen to the news coming out of Washington, it's like Americans are living in this kind of fantasy world that bears no relation to planet earth, where I'm trying to report. And this is getting steadily worse.

And I think one of the problems is, as I say, this parasitic, osmotic relationship between journalists and power, our ever-growing ability, our wish, to — you know, to rely on these utterly bankrupt comments from various unnamed, anonymous intelligence sources. And I'm just looking at a copy of the Toronto Globe and Mail, February 1st, 2013. It's a story about al-Qaeda in Algeria. And what is the sourcing? “U.S. intelligence officials said, “a senior U.S. intelligence official said,” “U.S. officials said,” “the intelligence official said,” “Algerian officials say,” “national security sources considered,” “European security sources said,” “the U.S. official said,” “the officials acknowledged.” I went—boy, I've got another even worse example here from The Boston Globe and Mail sic, November 2nd, 2012. But, you know, we might as well name our newspapers “Officials Say.” This is the cancer at the bottom of modern journalism, that we do not challenge power anymore. Why are Americans tolerating these garbage stories with no real sourcing except for very dodgy characters indeed, who won't give their names?

Continue reading “Berto Jongman: Robert Fisk: We Might As Well Name Our Newspapers ‘Officials Say'”

2013/05/07

Marcus Aurelius: The Cyber-Dam Break — “Blame It On China” Goes Into High Gear

02 China, Commerce, Corruption, Government, Idiocy, Ineptitude, IO Deeds of War, IO Impotency, Military, Officers Call

The Cyber-Dam Breaks

Sensitive Army database of U.S. dams compromised; Chinese hackers suspected

BY: Bill Gertz

The Washington Free Beacon, May 1, 2013

U.S. intelligence agencies traced a recent cyber intrusion into a sensitive infrastructure database to the Chinese government or military cyber warriors, according to U.S. officials.

The compromise of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers’ National Inventory of Dams (NID) is raising new concerns that China is preparing to conduct a future cyber attack against the national electrical power grid, including the growing percentage of electricity produced by hydroelectric dams.

According to officials familiar with intelligence reports, the Corps of Engineers’ National Inventory of Dams was hacked by an unauthorized user believed to be from China, beginning in January and uncovered earlier this month.

Continue reading “Marcus Aurelius: The Cyber-Dam Break — “Blame It On China” Goes Into High Gear”

2013/05/072013/05/07

Stephen E. Arnold: From Journalism to Churnalism

Ineptitude, IO Impotency, Media

From Journalism to Churnalism

May 7, 2013

The Sunlight Foundation and Media Standards Trust have collaborated on a joint project to address plagiarism in the media. Their creation? A web tool and browser extension, Churnalism US. We took a look at The Sunlight Foundation’s recent article on it: “Churnalism: Discover When News Copies from Other Sources.”

The browser extension will be available for Chrome, Internet Explorer and Firefox (full approval pending). The process works by enabling Churnalism to extract article text from a whitelist of common news sites. When it finds a match, it lets you know when the text you are reading might have been copied from another source. The capabilities of this extension are driven by open-source text analysis technology.

Curious about how this would look? We were too, but the luckily this article dove into those details:

“For some anecdotal evidence from my experience using Churnalism, I’ve found a number of instances of articles about science topics relying heavily on press releases and study summaries. For example, take this piece on the BBC website about epilepsy and migraines. Churnalism found a significant portion of the text came from this press release in EurekaAlert! and let me know with a ribbon notification on the top of the page. By tapping the Show Me button on the notification, Churnalism overlays a side-by-side display of the article and the possible match with copied text highlighted for easy comparison.”

With the need for information to be delivered in real-time and the proliferation of sources available to an ever expanding and niche-oriented audience, it is no wonder that there are enough “churnalists” to warrant this browser extension. Since we curate, we must be churnalists too.

Continue reading “Stephen E. Arnold: From Journalism to Churnalism”

2013/05/062013/05/06

Eagle: Hagel To Meet Free Syrian Army – Israel/AIPAC Hosting Free Syrian Army in Washington DC on 9 May — New War for USA?

Corruption, Government, Idiocy, Ineptitude, Military

300 Million Talons... — 300 Million Talons…

We are facing the prospect of an even more horrendous war in Syria and the region. Pressure is mounting on Obama to openly supply the rebel militias with more lethal weapons, and/or to impose a no-fly zone. The White House is “doubting” yesterday's U.N. investigation finding that points to the Syrian rebels using of sarin gas, (and not the regime).

This Thursday, Tzipi Livni, the “Free Syrian Army” and Chuck Hagel will confer here at the Ritz-Carlton. What are they planning? As an activist for Peace and Non-violence, are you comfortable with their secret negotiations?

*******************************

Why would the AIPAC funded and staffed, WINEP, at their upcoming 2013 Soref Symposium, scheduled for May 9, host members of the Free Syrian Army…?

Schedule:

— Noon: Israeli Minister of Justice Tzipi Livni delivers remarks on “Israel’s New Government and the Challenge of Peacemaking with the Palestinians”

— 2:30 p.m.: Anwar Esmat El Sadat, founder and chairman of the El Sadat Association for Social Development and Welfare; and Dennis Ross, former senior Middle East adviser to four presidents and counselor at WINEP, participate in a discussion on “Egypt’s Revolution, Two Years On: Transition in Distress?”

— 4 p.m.: Col. Abdul Hamid Zakaria, commander and spokesman for the Free Syrian Army; and Col. Abdul Jabbar Akidi, Free Syrian Army commander and head of the Revolutionary Military Council in Aleppo, participate in a breakout discussion on “Inside Syria: The Battle Against Assad’s Regime.” (The session is off the record)

— 7 p.m.: Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel deliver remarks on “U.S. Defense Policy in the Middle East”

LOCATION: Ritz-Carlton Hotel, 1150 22nd Street NW, Washington, D.C.CONTACT: Brittany Parker,

202-452-0650 ext. 244; press@washingtoninstitute.org [Note: Speeches by Tzipi Livni, Anwwar El Sadat and Chuck Hagel will be available via live-stream at https://www.washingtoninstitute.org. RSVP to Brittany Parker at press@washingtoninstitute.org for media credentials]

(This schedue is no longer available on the WINEP website. I copied it from a blog, which also has Col.Wilkerson interview on Young Turks.)

http://my.firedoglake.com/ctuttle/2013/05/04/wilkerson-chemical-weapon-use-in-syria-could-have-been-an-israeli-false-flag-operation/

2013/05/05

Berto Jongman: Decapitation Does Not Work – Makes Religious Groups MORE Violent

Government, Ineptitude, Military

PDF 10 pages

The Journal of International Policy Solutions

Spring 2008 | Volume 9 40

Testing The Snake Head Strategy: Does Killing or Capturing its Leaders Reduce a Terrorist Group’s Activity?

EXTRACT:

The result that consistently stood out from this researchwas the propensity of decapitation strikes to cause religious organizations to become substantially more deadly

Read full article (lots of mathematics).

2013/05/042013/05/04

Marcus Aurelius: Six Items on Defense Budget Madness

Corruption, Government, Idiocy, Ineptitude, Military

This appears spot-on. I've had some one-on-one experience with OSD CAPE and they appear to be true non-patriots whose sole function is to cut dollars. They don't seem to have a clue as to what the business of defending America is all about. They particularly oppose the concept of redundancy. In our huge bay, we have a cartoon posted about egg-head researchers at a blackboard whose task is to provide a scientific justification for a pre-determined solution: transfer dollars from the Army to the Air Force and Navy. That pretty well summarizes OSD CAPE and where things are heading these days. Big picture:

1. Pivot to Pacific is impacted by sequestration.

2. Congress thinks sequestration is effective tool to cut government spending and may well extend it.

3. Army is sucking wind for money, cyber geeks are a growth industry.

4. Navy and Air Force want to leave Army as only Service furloughing people.

James Jay Carafano: Chuck Hagel begins knifing the Pentagon

EXTRACT:

CAPE is a number-cruncher. CAPE doesn't do strategy. Hagel can count on CAPE to put a happy face on sequester-size defense budgets.

Even more worrisome was Hagel's announcement that CAPE's assessment would provide the foundation for the Quadrennial Defense Review. The QDR is supposed to be a long-term assessment of missions, capabilities, threats and resource requirements — not a rubber stamp for budget cutting.

Read full article.

Continue reading “Marcus Aurelius: Six Items on Defense Budget Madness”