Category: Journal ISSN 1078-1935

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Revolving Door Between Congress & Wall Street + Oil & Gas Money to Congress

05 Energy, Money, Banks & Concentrated Wealth, Power Behind-the-Scenes/Special Interests
link to report

From OpenSecrets.org
Organizations in the financial services sector have deployed at least 1,447 former federal employees to lobby Congress and federal agencies since the beginning of 2009, according to a joint analysis of federal disclosure records and other data released today by Public Citizen and the Center for Responsive Politics. (Download the full report here: FinancialRevolvingDoors.pdf )

Oil & Gas: Money to Congress

Candidate Amount
Lincoln, Blanche (D-AR) $286,400
Vitter, David (R-LA) $242,600
Murkowski, Lisa (R-AK) $209,826
Boren, Dan (D-OK) $139,700
Bennett, Robert F (R-UT) $138,400
Blunt, Roy (R-MO) $133,100
Cornyn, John (R-TX) $130,525
Specter, Arlen (D-PA) $130,400
Edwards, Chet (D-TX) $123,630
Conaway, Mike (R-TX) $116,950
Coburn, Tom (R-OK) $105,100
Barton, Joe (R-TX) $100,470
Dorgan, Byron L (D-ND) $92,950
Thune, John (R-SD) $91,140
Cantor, Eric (R-VA) $87,000
DeMint, James W (R-SC) $79,951
Tiahrt, Todd (R-KS) $79,800
Burr, Richard (R-NC) $78,200
Ross, Mike (D-AR) $76,950
Fleming, John Calvin Jr (R-LA) $76,300

Related:
+ Earmark database

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Event: 10 Jun-07 Aug 2010, NYC, Re:Group: Beyond Models of Consensus @EyeBeam (free)

Academia, Civil Society, Collective Intelligence, Cultural Intelligence, Media, Non-Governmental, Technologies
event (free) link

Jun 10, 2010 – Aug 07, 2010
Eyebeam Atelier
540 W 21st St. New York, NY 10011

From the Eyebeam Press Release: “With participation now a dominant paradigm, structuring business models, creative and activist practice, the architecture of the city, and the economy, we are all integrated into structures of participation whether we want to be or not. The exhibition will examine models of participation and participation as a model, presenting work that encourages subversive participation, intervenes into existing systems, or envisions new alternatives.”

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Search: the emerging worldwide university (to be finished later)

Searches

This is a very important search that failed to yield a proper automated response.  Here is the human-in-the-loop answer.

Search terms on this site: World Brain, Global Brain, Collective Intelligence, World University, M4IS2

Journal: Taming Twitter–Emergence of Baby World Brain?

Journal: GPS Finally Fully Integrated in Voice Comms

Journal: Google, the Cloud, Microsoft, & World Brain

Reference: Indexing & Seaching Information Timeline

Reference: World Brain Review

Review: A New World Order

Review: Global Mind

Review: The Emerging Worldwide Electronic University–Information Age Global Higher Education

Search: “global futures partnership” 2010

Search: osint and it’s role in intelligence

Search: smart nation intelligence reform electoral reform national security reform

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US Gov War on Whistleblowers Intensifying

Government, Intelligence (government), Media, Secrecy & Politics of Secrecy

War on whistle-blowers intensifies

By Glenn Greenwald for Salon.com

see full article here

AP Photo/Charles Dharapak
In this March 19, 2010, file photo, President Barack Obama speaks at the Patriot Center at George Mason University in Fairfax, Va.

The Obama administration's war on whistleblowers — whose disclosures are one of the very few remaining avenues for learning what our government actually does — continues to intensify. Last month, the DOJ announced it had obtained an indictment against NSA whistleblower Thomas Drake, who exposed serious waste, abuse and possible illegality. Then, the DOJ re-issued a Bush era subpoena to Jim Risen of The New York Times, demanding the identity of his source who revealed an extremely inept and damaging CIA effort to infiltrate the Iranian nuclear program. And now, as Politico‘s Josh Gerstein reports, an FBI linguist who leaked what he believed to be evidence of lawbreaking is to receive a prison term that is “likely to become the longest ever served by a government employee accused of passing national security secrets to a member of the media.” As Gerstein explains:

[I]t reflects a surprising development: President Barack Obama’s Justice Department has taken a hard line against leakers, and Obama himself has expressed anger about disclosures of national security deliberations in the press. . . .

“They’re going after this at every opportunity and with unmatched vigor,” said Steven Aftergood of the Federation of American Scientists, a critic of government classification policy. . . .

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BP’s Corrosive History in Alaska Spill, Safety Fraud, Destroying Whistleblowers, and Bush Re-Election Campaign

03 Environmental Degradation, 05 Energy, Corporations, Corruption

Smart Pig:
BP's OTHER Spill this Week

by Greg Palast for Buzzflash.com
Friday, May 28 2010

With the Gulf Coast dying of oil poisoning, there's no space in the press for British Petroleum's latest spill, just this week: over 100,000 gallons, at its Alaska pipeline operation. A hundred thousand used to be a lot. Still is.

On Tuesday, Pump Station 9, at Delta Junction on the 800-mile pipeline, busted. Thousands of barrels began spewing an explosive cocktail of hydrocarbons after “procedures weren't properly implemented” by BP operators, say state inspectors “Procedures weren't properly implemented” is, it seems, BP's company motto.

Few Americans know that BP owns the controlling stake in the trans-Alaska pipeline; but, unlike with the Deepwater Horizon, BP keeps its Limey name off the Big Pipe.

There's another reason to keep their name off the Pipe: their management of the pipe stinks. It's corroded, it's undermanned and “basic maintenance” is a term BP never heard of.

How does BP get away with it? The same way the Godfather got away with it: bad things happen to folks who blow the whistle. BP has a habit of hunting down and destroying the careers of those who warn of pipeline problems.

Continue reading “BP's Corrosive History in Alaska Spill, Safety Fraud, Destroying Whistleblowers, and Bush Re-Election Campaign”

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NIGHTWATCH Extract: US-Israel-Turkey-Hamas

02 Diplomacy, 04 Inter-State Conflict, 05 Iran, 07 Other Atrocities, 08 Proliferation, 08 Wild Cards, 10 Security, 11 Society, Counter-Oppression/Counter-Dictatorship Practices

Israel-Turkey-Hamas: Four ships from the Gaza-bound flotilla that was raided on 31 May Israeli naval forces have arrived at the port of Ashdod, Israel, accompanied by Israeli warships, Al Jazeera reported.

According to Israel Defense Forces Chief of Staff Gen. Gabi Ashkenazi, the Israeli soldiers that intercepted the Gaza-bound aid flotilla acted in self-defense, and violence aboard the Mavi Marmara, one of the aid ships, was instigated by those aboard the ship, The Jerusalem Post reported 31 May. Ashkenazi said passengers aboard most of the ships were activists but the Mavi Marmara, the only ship on which violence took place, was sponsored by what he termed an “extremist organization” the Turkish non-governmental organization Insani Yardim Vakfi.

International Reaction: Every country in the world that pays attention to the Middle East or contains a mosque has condemned or denounced Israel. Pakistan has called for Muslim countries to act in concert in peaceful coercion of Israel.

NIGHTWATCH Comment: NightWatch assesses that US diplomacy for a Middle East peace plan is the actual target of the Israeli naval action. Israel has just demonstrated that the US cannot control Israel, undermining any confidence Arab countries place in US promises relating to Israeli behavior. Israel refuses to be bound by US promises.

Continue reading “NIGHTWATCH Extract: US-Israel-Turkey-Hamas”

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Journal: Dropping COIN–McChrystal Returns to His Roots

03 Economy, 04 Inter-State Conflict, 05 Civil War, 07 Other Atrocities, 08 Wild Cards, 10 Security, Ethics, Military, Peace Intelligence
Chuck Spinney Recommends

By FRANKLIN C. SPINNEY, Counterpunch, 27 May 2010

FULL STORY ONLINE

For the past several years Americans have been inundated by reams of journalistic puff pieces extolling the virtues of the new US Counterinsurgency (COIN) Strategy documented by General Petraeus in his much ballyhooed COIN manual — which for the most part was a merely regurgitation of the failed thinking of French Marshal Lyautey's ink spot strategy (that counterinsurgent forces should aim to secure an ever expanding geographic zone of security with each new area secured providing a basis for further spreading, and so on.)
It is becoming clear, however, the showpiece of this new strategy, the Marjah operation, has failed to deliver on the promised security improvements to the people, and in the words of the theater commander, General Stanley McChrystal, has become a “bleeding ulcer.” 
Coupled with the deadlines imposed by President President Obama, when he approved McChrystal's ill-thought out plan last Fall, notwithstanding the cogent misgivings expressed by Ambassador Eikenberry, it is now clear that McChrystal is under mounting pressure to deliver some progress by the end of the year. 

Indeed, hair may be on fire at McChrystal's Bagram headquarters.  Rumors are circulating in military circles of backbiting and finger pointing, as well as complaints that MacChrystal is being set up as a fall guy, while his boss, General Petraeus, skates to a Republican presidential nomination in 2012.

Continue reading “Journal: Dropping COIN–McChrystal Returns to His Roots”

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