This whole thing leaves me believing that something rotten is going on in Langley…..from my work I know the following:
AQ did not conduct operations based on historical dates. Infiltrating AQ was the hardest task we faced. In fact, the CIA and other IC elements always preached that it was almost impossible to insert a double into the mix, it just required too much on our part. Now we have a success by a double agent?
The Central Intelligence Agency successfully thwarted an Al Qaeda plot to use a sophisticated underwear bomb to bring down a U.S. airliner around the one-year anniversary of Osama bin Laden’s death, the Associated Press reported yesterday.
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According to the AP report, the Yemen-based suicide bomber had not selected a target or purchased purchase plane tickets when U.S. intelligence officials seized the device. It is unclear what happened to the would-be suicide bomber.
Americans are tightening their belts, and it’s time for the U.S. government to do the same. In light of the Budget Control Act of 2011 and the subsequent failure of the “Super Committee,” Congress is still desperately seeking ways to reduce spending. To this end, the Project On Government Oversight and Taxpayers for Common Sense have closely examined the proposed national security budget[1] and found plenty of wasteful spending. Adjusted for inflation, U.S. national security spending is higher than at any point during the Cold War and accounts for more than half of all discretionary spending.[2] However, the U.S. faces no existential threats as it did then, and U.S. defense needs are changing as the military draws down its presence in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Still, military spending at the Department of Defense (DoD) has increased by an astounding 95 percent from FY 2001 to the FY 2013 estimate, adjusted for inflation.[3] Nuclear weapons spending at the Department of Energy (DOE) is projected to grow by billions of dollars over the next decade.[4] And the federal government’s reliance on contractors, most of whom work on national security-related work and cost on average nearly twice as much as the federal workers who do the same job, is also driving budgets through the roof.[5] It’s clear that any serious proposal to shrink the U.S. deficit must include cuts to the national security budget.
The following list updates our recommendations from 2011[6] and details nearly $700 billion in savings over the next ten years, including cuts to wasteful weapons systems as well as limits on out-of-control contract spending. We found programs for which there are cheaper yet equally effective alternatives, and programs that can be cancelled or delayed without putting America’s security at risk.
The Project On Government Oversight is a nonpartisan independent watchdog that champions good government reforms. POGO’s investigations into corruption, misconduct, and conflicts of interest achieve a more effective, accountable, open, and ethical federal government.
Taxpayers for Common Sense is a nonpartisan budget watchdog serving as an independent voice for American taxpayers. Its mission is to achieve a government that spends taxpayer dollars responsibly and operates within its means. TCS works with individuals, policymakers, and the media to increase transparency, expose and eliminate wasteful and corrupt subsidies, earmarks, and corporate welfare, and hold decision makers accountable.
Wasteful Spending in the Department of Defense Budget
While news around the world was told that sheriff candidate J.T. Ready, leader of the controversial US Border Guard, had killed his family and himself, they had always been holding an eyewitness, the 17 year old daughter of Ready’s girl friend, who, from moment one, had given them descriptions of those who killed Ready and the rest of her family.
Yet, the Gilbert police, the Pinal County Sheriff, both suspected of being on “cartel” payrolls, nor even the FBI, conflicted by jurisdictional disputes, has yet to release the truth, begin an investigation or start looking for suspects.
. . . . . . . .
Only one small problem, the Gilbert Police spokesman made the statement knowing it was false, and incomplete. The Gilbert Police Department had witness 17 year old Brittany Modero in protective custody. The Gilbert PD also had statements from neighbors who saw 2 other cars at the house, which fled the scene before the police arrived at the shooting.
This is more than simple obstruction of justice, the Gilbert PD and every corporate owned and controlled News outlet in Arizona especially the local outlet for Village Voice Media, the “New Times” reporter Stephen Lemons. Since it has now been disclosed that there were other people in the house at the time of the shooting, why didn’t Gilbert PD or Media outlet issue an apology or a retraction. Nothing but silence from corporate media, I guess the truth does not fit their pre-planned agenda to destroy the character of Mr. Ready and cast him as a crazed white supremacist, Neo-Nazi.
Phi Beta Iota: There is evidently strong evidence that Mr. Ready was an FBI informant, which means that local law enforcement personnel, corrupted by the cartels, may have murdered not just a citizen, but a federal informant as well. The FBI does not appear too eager to get to the bottom of this….just as they were not at all interested in leads to the 9/11 atrocity received before the event.
Two Charts Exposing America's Record Shadow Welfare State
Here was a little mentioned tangent to last Friday's very disappointing NFP print of +115,000 (driven by a surge in temp jobs offsetting a collapse in full time positions): as David Rosenberg notes, the jobs number was about half of another far more important number – that of Americans applying for disability, which in April was +225,000. He continues: “this is the new stealth stimulus program – so far in 2011, nearly one million Americans have applied for disability and year-to-date, 333k have actually enrolled (covering 539k family members). In total, more than five million people have been added to disability coverage since President Obama took over three years ago.”
Click on Image to Enlarge
The punchline will make all those who adore (insolvent) welfare states shake with giddy delight: “So look – either safety standards at work have eroded dramatically or the “99%” have found a creative way to milk the system and turn the economy into a quasi welfare state“…. Yup. What he said. Because remember: the BLS assumes that any amount up to the total 53 million people, is not in the labor force as they have other “wefare” based forms of government handouts and see no need at all to look for a job. Is there any wonder why US unemployment is realistically 20% if not much higher? As for the other chart, food stamps, we know that story all too well.
“Wholesome” means healthy, in the sense of something that promotes physical and moral well-being. Wholesome capitalism would take into account the wholeness of people and the social and natural world we live in, and it would enhance that wholeness.
Some people think capitalism already does this. They note how good it has been at generating wealth. The word wealth, meaning abundance, derives from roots meaning well-being and wholeness. Many of capitalism's advocates feel it should be freed from constraints so it can generate more wealth.
Others note that capitalism – while generating wealth for some – many or few, depending on its form in a particular time and place – nevertheless generates much suffering and destruction in the process. It reduces everything to money and maximizes financial return even if it has to degrade and destroy human and natural life to do it. Many of capitalism's critics feel it should be undermined or overthrown.
Still others note both the blessings and problems with capitalism. They think we can have the wealth without so much suffering and destruction. Most of these people promote freeing capitalism's creativity and productivity while restraining its rapaciousness in various ways – using everything from laws, regulations and taxes to moral suasion and consumer-shareholder activism.
In this article I advocate all three positions – odd as that may sound – but only after reframing “capital” and “wealth” to better reflect wholeness.
THE PRIMARY DYNAMIC OF CAPITALISM
The special gift of capitalism is its ability to create MORE – more products and services, more self-organized economic activity, more wealth. In systems science, this tendency to create more-ness is called a positive or reinforcing feedback dynamic.
Some readers have come to the erroneous conclusion that the Matrix consists of Republican Party disinformation as if there is no disinformation from the left. Others think that propaganda is the business of Obama and the Democrats. In fact, propaganda from the right, the left and the middle are all part of the disinformation fed to americans.
If I may give some examples: The other day Chuck Colson, one of the Nixon officials imprisoned for Watergate crimes, died. This gave NPR the opportunity to relive the Nixon horror.
What precisely was the Nixon horror? Essentially, there was no such thing. Watergate was about President Nixon lying about when he learned about the Watergate burglary.
When Nixon learned about the burglary, he did not act on it prior to his reelection, because he reasoned, rightly, that the Washington Post would blame him for the burglary, although he had nothing to do with it, in the hopes of preventing his reelection.
By going along with a cover-up, Nixon enabled the Washington Post to make an issue of the precise date on which Nixon learned of the burglary. White House tapes indicated that Nixon had learned of the burglary before he said he learned of it. So Nixon had permitted a cover-up and had to go, but what was the real reason?
What was the Watergate burglary? We don’t really know. A group of men including former CIA operatives were hired by the Committee to Re-elect the President to break into a Democratic campaign office in the Watergate complex. We don’t know the purpose of the burglary. Some claim it was to wire-tap the telephones in the belief that the Democratic Party was getting re-election money from communists in Cuba or elsewhere. Others claim that the burglars were looking for a list of call girls, that compromised a White House official, as his fiancee was allegedly one of the call girls.
Looking back from our time during which Bush and Obama have deep-sixed the US Constitution, violated numerous US and international laws, and behaved as if they were caesars unconstrained by any law or any morality, Nixon’s “crimes” appear so trivial as to be unremarkable. Yet, Nixon was driven from office and is regarded as a criminal.
I confess: I have an interest in an unseemly topic. Last year I coauthored a report on the subject and testified before Congress about it. The subject is labor trafficking.
This is not, of course, a problem exclusive to the PMSCO sector but neither is it something that has happened only now and then either. Suffice it to say that it enough of a problem that this is the second conference ISOA organized on the issue, the first being seven years ago. The conference program guide minced no words in stating why a conference is necessary:
Labor trafficking is a disgraceful practice that plagues many country as well as international peacekeeping and stability operations. Poverty creates pools of desperate labor at high risk of human trafficking of all kinds, including forced labor. The problem is morally reprehensible but of such enormous complexity it cannot be solved by a single sector and must be addressed by stakeholders working in partnership from all sides — private, governmental, nongovernmental and humanitarians sectors; clients and employers
As a sign that of its recognition of the seriousness of the problem ISOA's Code of Conduct has long had a provision stating that “Signatories shall not engage or allow their personnel to engage in the act of trafficking in persons.”
Trafficking in persons takes different forms. It might be forced labor, sex trafficking or bonded labor, to name a few examples. The first two types have happened in the PMSC industry.
As an article in JIPO notes:
Human trafficking on U.S. government contracts in the Central Command (“CENTCOM”) sector is chronic, overt and unabated. The appalling fact that hundreds of thousands of men have been used as slave laborers to support “freedom” operations is not lost upon the victims.
Investigative journalists reporting of widespread human trafficking of laborers on U.S. government contracts in CENTCOM date back to 2004. The New York Times reported the too common fraudulent recruiting scheme that began in 2003 when contractors first started trafficking men to perform services on government contracts. The Chicago Tribune also covered human trafficking in 2005, calling out the use of US tax dollars to provide slave labor during wartime. Articles in USA Today have reported labor trafficking abuses of Asian workers in Saudi Arabia as well as forced labor of Thai workers in the United States, considered “the nations biggest human trafficking operations.”
Personal investigations both on the ground in Iraq, and in conducted interviews of victims who have returned to the Indian subcontinent, have produced conclusions consistent with other investigative journalists. Other investigative journalists such as David Phinney and reporters who have been on the ground, observed the practice and interviewed thousands of victims have also highlighted this blight on our national image. In fact, the only thing parties agree upon is that the practice is prolific, unabated and contrary to the very foundation and core of American values.
A more blunt way of putting is, as one conference speaker noted, is that we now have people enslaved than at any time in human history, with estimates ranging from 12 to 27 million people.
Interestingly, this is not an issue where people think this is something best left to industry to self-regulate. As the morning keynote speaker Ambassador Luis CdeBaca, senior adviser to the secretary of state, Office to Monitor and Combat Trafficking in Persons, said:
Government is the answer, government is the solution, but it is not the only player. We have to dismiss the notion that this is someone else's problem. This is our problem and we have to be part of the solution. Our starting point has to be that we're not making the problem worse.
Those wanting more detail should see the current (May/June) issue of ISOA's JIPO magazine, which is devoted to the subject. According to ISOA it will be online later this week.
