Journal: Contractors Out of Control, Money Wasted

04 Inter-State Conflict, 05 Civil War, 08 Wild Cards, 10 Security, 11 Society, Commerce, Commercial Intelligence, Ethics, Government, Military, Peace Intelligence
Chuck Spinney
Chuck Spinney

Published on Friday, December 18, 2009 by Rebel Reports

Stunning Statistics About the War Every American Should Know

Contrary to popular belief, the US actually has 189,000 personnel on the ground in Afghanistan right now—and that number is quickly rising.

by Jeremy Scahill

A hearing in Sen. Claire McCaskill's Contract Oversight subcommittee on contracting in Afghanistan has highlighted some important statistics that provide a window into the extent to which the Obama administration has picked up the Bush-era war privatization baton and sprinted with it. Overall, contractors now comprise a whopping 69% of the Department of Defense's total workforce, “the highest ratio of contractors to military personnel in US history.” That's not in one war zone-that's the Pentagon in its entirety.

In Afghanistan, the Obama administration blows the Bush administration out of the privatized water. According to a memo [PDF] released by McCaskill's staff, “From June 2009 to September 2009, there was a 40% increase in Defense Department contractors in Afghanistan. During the same period, the number of armed private security contractors working for the Defense Department in Afghanistan doubled, increasing from approximately 5,000 to more than 10,000.”

At present, there are 104,000 Department of Defense contractors in Afghanistan. According to a report this week from the Congressional Research Service, as a result of the coming surge of 30,000 troops in Afghanistan, there may be up to 56,000 additional contractors deployed. But here is another group of contractors that often goes unmentioned: 3,600 State Department contractors and 14,000 USAID contractors. That means that the current total US force in Afghanistan is approximately 189,000 personnel (68,000 US troops and 121,000 contractors). And remember, that's right now. And that, according to McCaskill, is a conservative estimate. A year from now, we will likely see more than 220,000 US-funded personnel on the ground in Afghanistan.

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Journal: CNN & Fox Ignore Peace Rally, Others Notice

11 Society, Civil Society, Collective Intelligence, Government, Media

Full Story Online
Full Story Online
Protests?  They are ILLEGAL Under the Obama-Bloomberg Administrations
EndWar Protest Website

UPDATED:

15 Dec 09

Protest? What Protest?

By Dave Lindorff
The Public Record
Dec 15th, 2009

In what passes for corporate journalism in America, this concept has taken the form of, “If we don’t report on it, it didn’t happen.”

That certainly was the case for the emergency protest organized by a coalition of anti-war organizations under the banner EndUSWars.org, which saw over 1000 people gather on short notice in the bitter cold on Lafayette Park opposite the White House to protest President Obama’s escalation of the war in Afghanistan on Saturday, Dec. 12.

Not a word about this impromptu protest, which included many people who had supported the election of President Obama only a year ago, appeared in the New York Times. Nor did the Washington Post bother to mention the protest in its own back yard, not even in its Metro section pages. The other national newspaper, USA Today, likewise blacked out news of the protest.

Topic: War

Peace Movement Says Hello World


A new anti-war coalition based at EndUSwars.org held its first rally on Saturday, Dec. 12 2009 outside the U.S. White House.


by John Kusumi (centrist liberal)     Monday, December 14, 2009

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Worth a Look: Nader 2000 campaign manager publishes article on discriminatory ballot access laws

09 Justice, 11 Society, Collective Intelligence, Cultural Intelligence, Reform, Worth A Look
Full Story Online
Full Story Online

Theresa Amato, who served as campaign manager for Ralph Nader’s 2000 Green and 2004 independent runs for president, has an opinion piece in the Harvard Law Record entitled “The Two Party Ballot Suppresses Third Party Change”. She notes that although Nader wrote a piece on discriminatory ballot access laws for the same publication in 1958, the situation has not improved in the 51 years since then. Amato is the author of the recent book Grand Illusion: the Myth of Voter Choice in a Two-Party Tyranny. See also Review: Running on Empty–How the Democratic and Republican Parties Are Bankrupting Our Future and What Americans Can Do About It (Paperback)

Other References:

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Journal: Stolen Valor & Ignored Suicides & Amputees

04 Inter-State Conflict, 05 Civil War, 10 Security, 11 Society, Military, Peace Intelligence
Dishonorably Phoney
Dishonorably Phoney

Military Impostors Are Neither Few Nor Proud

Mary Schantag, co-founder and researcher for the POW Network, said her group's Web site lists 3,500 “phonies and wannabes” who claim to be former prisoners of war, medal recipients, members of elite forces or heroic combat veterans. She said she receives new allegations daily.

“This is an epidemic,” said Schantag, who is based in Skidmore, Mo. “It's almost a mass identity theft of people who earned their status as heroes.”

. . . . . . .

“It pretty much boils down to ego, women or money,” Schantag said.

Many impostors get away with their claims for years because the military does not keep a list of most medal recipients. Sterner, who pushed for adoption of the Stolen Valor Act, is now campaigning for legislation that would require the Pentagon to maintain a list of all the men and women it has honored.

“How many people do you see out there claiming they won an Academy Award and didn't?” he asked. “None, since there is a list of Academy Award recipients. How many phonies are claiming Silver Stars? They are all over the country because there is no list of Silver Star recipients.”

Sterner has compiled his own list of more than 26,000 medal winners and posted it on the Hall of Valor Web site, sponsored by the Military Times. Members of the public can search the database to verify the names of true medal winners. Earlier this month, AMVETS launched ReportStolenValor.org, where people can report suspected impostors.

Phi Beta Iota: Marcus Aureleus flagged this one, and we'd like to add to it the dismal lack of coverage of our suicides and amputees, two sides of the four-sided human cost of war that is almost deliberately concealed.  See those stories below.

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Journal: College Musings on Ron Paul and Economy

03 Economy, 11 Society, Communities of Practice, Ethics

Full Story Online
Full Story Online

The Ron Paul Revolution Continues

Lauren Kawam Issue date: 12/10/09 Section: News

He calls himself the “The ‘Real' hope for America – not hype,” according to his MySpace page, and if the number of friends he has on there is any indication – nearly 200,000 – Ron Paul isn't fading into the dust, at least not with the technologically savvy generations.

. . . . . . .

“The very good thing that has happened here in the last two years is that government's credibility is crashing,” Paul said. “There's been way too much trust in the government. That has been our moral hazard over many, many centuries. Trust in the government that it's here to help you, it's here to protect you … they're going to scare everybody to death to try to argue the reason why you have to have big government, and you really don't. What we need is more faith, more confidence and a better understanding of what individual liberty is all about.”

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Journal: Citizen Cyber-Detectives on the March

10 Security, 10 Transnational Crime, 11 Society, Civil Society, Collective Intelligence, Law Enforcement, Methods & Process, Mobile, Peace Intelligence, Real Time

Video 9:40 Min
Video 9:40 Min

The Internet Detective – Switzerland

There is a new breed of super-sleuth emerging in the virtual world of the web. For both petty criminals and major terrorist groups, internet detectives are fast becoming a force to be reckoned with.  Making it his business to track down criminal activity through the web, Guido Rudolphi, the Sherlock Holmes of the cyber world, considers himself a legal hacker. “So much more information can be accessed, quite legally, than the individual user would ever imagine.” Rudolphi has taken advantage of this new free-flow of online information to catch paedophiles, fraudsters, and even unearth international cells of Al-Quaeda. He demonstrates how it takes less than twenty minutes to establish a persons credentials, locate them and hand them over to the police. “People seem to think theyre anonymous online, that nothing can happen to them there thats very naive.”

Journal: The Cost of Being Black

01 Poverty, 03 Economy, 11 Society, Cultural Intelligence

THE COST OF BEING BLACK

White Americans have long resisted the idea of reparations to the descendants of slaves.We examine the psychological basis of such resistance, primarily testing the possibility that resistance may be a function of Whites’ perception of the ongoing cost of being Black. White participants (n = 958) across twelve independent samples (varying in age, student status, and geographic location) were asked variations of the question: How much should you be paid to continue to live the remainder of your life as a Black person? Participants generally required low median amounts, less than $10,000, to make the race change, whereas they requested high amounts, $1,000,000, to give up television.

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