Topics (All Other) – Page 20 – Public Intelligence Blog

2012/04/132012/04/13

Marcus Aurelius: Early Warning DoD Reductions in Force 6% to 50%

03 Economy, 07 Other Atrocities, 10 Security, 11 Society, Budgets & Funding, Commercial Intelligence, Corruption, DHS, DoD, Government, IO Impotency, Military, Office of Management and Budget

Marcus-Aurelius-150x150 — Marcus Aurelius

Starting to see initial indications that at least one part of DoD is gearing up to cut anywhere from 6% to 50% of its workforce within the fairly near term, perhaps beginning as soon as 01 Oct. Drivers could be generic deficit reduction, sequestration, and historic limitations on strength levels in certain types of organizations. Expect it to be ugly — sprung at last minute, execute without finesse.)

Government Workers Are Unfairly Assailed

By Ted Kaufman, US Senator (DE)

Wilmington (DE) News Journal
April 8, 2012

We've heard a lot in the past couple of years, pro and con, about escalating CEO compensation, but it seems to me at least one argument in their defense has merit. It is important to pay enough to recruit and retain the best talent available in the highly competitive global marketplace.

What seems strange to me is that those who believe this is true, that you have to pay well to attract the best talent, usually don't accept the same argument when it comes to government employees.

One of the more dangerous consequences of the financial crisis is how governments at all levels are, in effect, cutting off their noses to spite
their faces. In the rush to balance their budgets, some are indiscriminately firing, freezing and cutting pay, and cutting pensions — too often impacting the people who actually make government work.

Continue reading “Marcus Aurelius: Early Warning DoD Reductions in Force 6% to 50%”

2012/04/122012/04/14

Mini-Me: Myths of US Government Shattered – JFK Assassination by USG Cabal Set to Unravel Along with 9/11 Related Lies and Cover-Ups

07 Other Atrocities, 09 Justice, 10 Security, 11 Society, Blog Wisdom, Book Lists, Corruption, Counter-Oppression/Counter-Dictatorship Practices, Government, IO Deeds of War, IO Impotency

Huh?

The Murder of [CIA Spouse] Mary Pinchot Meyer

Jacob G. Hornberger
Future of Freedom Foundation

Recently by Jacob G. Hornberger: The Kennedy Assassination

In early 1976 the National Enquirer published a story that shocked the elite political class in Washington, D.C. The story disclosed that a woman named Mary Pinchot Meyer, who was a divorced spouse of a high CIA official named Cord Meyer, had been engaged in a two-year sexual affair with President John F. Kennedy. By the time the article was published, JFK had been assassinated, and Mary Pinchot Meyer herself was dead, a victim of a murder that took place in Washington on October 12, 1964.<

The murder of Mary Pinchot Meyer is the subject of a fascinating and gripping new book by Peter Janney, who was childhood friends with Mary Meyer’s three sons and whose father himself was a high CIA official. Janney’s father and mother socialized in the 1950s with the Meyers and other high-level CIA officials.

Janney’s book, Mary’s Mosaic, is one of those books that you just can’t put down once you start reading it. It has everything a reader could ever want in a work of nonfiction – politics, love, sex, war, intrigue, history, culture, murder, spies, racism, and perhaps the biggest criminal trial in the history of our nation’s capital.

Just past noon on the day of the murder, Mary Meyer was on her daily walk on the C&O Canal Trail near the Key Bridge in Washington, D.C. Someone grabbed her and shot a .38-caliber bullet into the left side of her head. Meyer continued struggling despite the almost certainly fatal wound, so the murderer shot her again, this time downward through her right shoulder. The second bullet struck directly into her heart, killing her instantly.

A 21-year-old black man named Raymond Crump Jr., who lived in one of the poorest sections of D.C., was arrested near the site of the crime and charged with the murder. Crump denied committing the crime.

There were two eyewitnesses, neither of whom, however, personally identified Crump. One witness, Henry Wiggins Jr., said that he saw a black man standing over the body and that the man wore a beige jacket, a dark cap, dark pants, and dark shoes. Another witness, William L. Mitchell, said that prior to the murder, he had been jogging on the trail when he saw a black man dressed in the same manner following Meyer a short time before she was killed.

Continue reading “Mini-Me: Myths of US Government Shattered – JFK Assassination by USG Cabal Set to Unravel Along with 9/11 Related Lies and Cover-Ups”

2012/04/112012/04/11

Mini-Me: Debunking Civil War Myths – About Control and Money, Not Freedom – Time for Secession Again, But From All Four Corners?

05 Civil War, 07 Other Atrocities, 11 Society, Civil Society, Cultural Intelligence, Government, History, IO Impotency, Military, Officers Call

Huh?

Debunking Civil War Myths – Long Proven Wrong

The Victors Write the War History, but Should Their Lies be Immortal?

[Veterans Today Editors Note: I was 46 before I learned that Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation did not free a single slave anywhere ….Jim W. Dean]

… by Steve Scroggins

The most persistent and pernicious Big Lie regarding the so-called “Civil War”— more properly called the “War to Prevent Southern Independence”— is this:

Noble and saintly yankees fought the war to abolish slavery; evil Confederates fought to preserve it.

The historical record incontrovertibly refutes this Big Lie and yet it lives on, repeated incessantly by many who know better, and by many, many more who accept without challenge what they were taught in government schools.

Continue reading “Mini-Me: Debunking Civil War Myths – About Control and Money, Not Freedom – Time for Secession Again, But From All Four Corners?”

2012/04/092012/04/09

Winston Wheeler: Lies, Damn Lies, & Panetta-Pentagon Criminal Insanity

Budgets & Funding, Corruption, DoD, Government, Military

WinslowWheeler Cropped — Winslow Wheeler

Cost growth in the last year in DOD's acquisition system was $74 billion, 34 percent more than the $55 billion presumed to occur in the sequester in January; while the time frames are different (see discussion below), so much for Secretary of Defense Panetta's asinine rhetoric that sequester would be a “Doomsday.”

Analysis of two recent acquisition reports is available at Time's Battleland blog at http://battleland.blogs.time.com/2012/04/09/lies-damn-lies-and-pentagon-budget-numbers/

and below.

Cost growth in the last year in DOD's acquisition system was $74 billion, 34 percent more than the $55 billion presumed to occur in the sequester in January; while the time frames are different (see discussion below), so much for Secretary of Defense Analysis of two recent acquisition reports is available at Time's Battleland blog at http://battleland.blogs.time.com/2012/04/09/lies-damn-lies-and-pentagon-budget-numbers/ and below.

Lies, Damn Lies, and The Pentagon's Latest Budget Numbers

By Winslow Wheeler | April 9, 2012 | +

Miss Piggy in Pearls — Leon Panetta in Drag

There's a pair of must-reads just out for anyone paying attention to the Pentagon's acquisition nightmare: one is a routinely scheduled, but important, report from the Defense Department; the other comes from one of the very few entities doing even minimal oversight of the Department of Defense these days, the Government Accountability Office.

Reviewing the reports separately results in a muddled picture of how the Pentagon buys its weapons. Happily, each report fills some of the data missing in the other. But, the two reports still leave some gaping holes, while providing a false impression of progress in the way the Defense Department buys weapons.

The two reports are GAO's annual review of major hardware acquisition, Defense Acquisitions: Assessments of Selected Weapon Programs, and DoD's new Selected Acquisition Report (SAR), both released March 30. What follows is my own After-Action Report – including the gaps, contradictions, and false assurances – after studying the data they do – and don't – contain.

The Death Spiral is Alive and Well

Continue reading “Winston Wheeler: Lies, Damn Lies, & Panetta-Pentagon Criminal Insanity”

2012/04/092012/04/09

Patrick Meier: Does the Humanitarian Industry Have a Future in The Digital Age?

Blog Wisdom, Civil Society, Collective Intelligence, Commerce, Commercial Intelligence, Cultural Intelligence, Earth Intelligence, Geospatial, Gift Intelligence, Government, info-graphics/data-visualization, InfoOps (IO), International Aid, IO Impotency, Methods & Process, microfinancing, Mobile, Non-Governmental, Peace Intelligence, Threats

Does the Humanitarian Industry Have a Future in The Digital Age?

I recently had the distinct honor of being on the opening plenary of the 2012 Skoll World Forum in Oxford. The panel, “Innovation in Times of Flux: Opportunities on the Heels of Crisis” was moderated by Judith Rodin, CEO of the Rockefeller Foundation. I've spent the past six years creating linkages between the humanitarian space and technology community, so the conversations we began during the panel prompted me to think more deeply about innovation in the humanitarian space. Clearly, humanitarian crises have catalyzed a number of important innovations in recent years. At the same time, however, these crises extend the cracks that ultimately reveal the inadequacies of existing humanita-rian organizations, particularly those resistant to change; and “any organization that is not changing is a battle-field monument” (While 1992).

These cracks, or gaps, are increasingly filled by disaster-affected communities themselves thanks in part to the rapid commercialization of communication technology. Question is: will the multi-billion dollar humanitarian industry change rapidly enough to avoid being left in the dustbin of history?

Crises often reveal that “existing routines are inadequate or even counter-productive [since] response will necessarily operate beyond the boundary of planned and resourced capabilities” (Leonard and Howitt 2007). More formally, “the ‘symmetry-breaking' effects of disasters undermine linearly designed and centralized administrative activities” (Corbacioglu 2006). This may explain why “increasing attention is now paid to the capacity of disaster-affected communities to ‘bounce back' or to recover with little or no external assistance following a disaster” (Manyena 2006).

Continue reading “Patrick Meier: Does the Humanitarian Industry Have a Future in The Digital Age?”

2012/04/032012/04/03

David Isenberg: Revolution at State? Or Lipstick on the Pig?

Advanced Cyber/IO, Analysis, Budgets & Funding, Earth Intelligence, Ethics, Future-Oriented, Government, InfoOps (IO), Intelligence (government), International Aid, Key Players, Methods & Process, Peace Intelligence, Policies, Strategy, Technologies, Threats

Revolution @State: The Spread of Ediplomacy

Executive summary

The US State Department has become the world’s leading user of ediplomacy. Ediplomacy now employs over 150 full-time personnel working in 25 different ediplomacy nodes at Headquarters. More than 900 people use it at US missions abroad.

Ediplomacy is now used across eight different program areas at State: Knowledge Management, Public Diplomacy and Internet Freedom dominate in terms of staffing and resources. However, it is also being used for Information Management, Consular, Disaster Response, harnessing External Resources and Policy Planning.

In some areas ediplomacy is changing the way State does business. In Public Diplomacy, State now operates what is effectively a global media empire, reaching a larger direct audience than the paid circulation of the ten largest US dailies and employing an army of diplomat-journalists to feed its 600-plus platforms. In other areas, like Knowledge Management, ediplomacy is finding solutions to problems that have plagued foreign ministries for centuries.

The slow pace of adaptation to ediplomacy by many foreign ministries suggests there is a degree of uncertainty over what ediplomacy is all about, what it can do and how pervasive its influence is going to be. This report – the result of a four-month research project in Washington DC – should help provide those answers.

2012-04-03 Hanson_Revolution-at-State (PDF 34 pages)

ROBERT STEELE: Fergus Hanson of Australia has done a truly superb job of describing the considerable efforts within the Department of State to achieve some semblance of electronic coherence and capacity. What he misses–and this does not reduce the value of his effort in the slightest–is the complete absence of strategy or substance within State, or legitimacy in the eyes of those being addressed. If the Department of State were to demand the pre-approved Open Source Agency for the South-Central Campus, and get serious about being the lead agency for public intelligence in the public interest, ediplomacy could become something more than lipstick on the pig. The money is available. What is lacking right now is intelligence with integrity in support of global Whole of Government strategy, operations, tactics, and technical advancement (i.e. Open Source Everything).

2012 PREPRINT FOR COMMENT: The Craft of Intelligence

Open Source Agency: Executive Access Point

Preparing America's Foreign Policy for the Twenty-first Century

Review (Guest): No More Secrets – Open Source Information and the Reshaping of U.S. Intelligence

Review: No More Secrets – Open Source Information and the Reshaping of U.S. Intelligence

Robert Steele: Citizen in Search of Integrity (Full Text Online for Google Translate)

Robert Steele: Itemization of Information Pathologies

2012/04/022012/04/02

Mini-Me: Empire Flames on the Edges, Loses the Backyard

Counter-Oppression/Counter-Dictatorship Practices, IO Impotency, Key Players, Policies, Threats

Huh?

Latin America to be Innovative in Rio+20

Prensa Latina, 2 April 2012

Quito, Apr 2 (Prensa Latina) Latin America is the only region with capacity to propose innovative initiatives at the World Conference on Sustainable Development Río+20 in the context of today's global crisis, said Mario Ruales, advisor for Environmental Affairs.

Ruales told Prensa Latina they are taking to the event the agreements of the Ministerial Meeting in Quito.

He added there has been consensus on basic environmental issues at the heart of the Bolivarian Alliance for the Peoples of Our Americas (ALBA) and from the Community of Latin American and Caribbean Community (CELAC).

Among them he mentioned regional support to Ecuador's initiative to promote a Universal Declaration on the Rights of Nature, matching human rights'.

“The foundations needs to be removed, noted the expert, since Ecuador and the subcontinent agree that the economy is part of a bigger natural system.Exceeding its limits may bring irreversible damage on the planet”, he added.

“We need to warn on this situation and achieve a global pact to revert the process,” notes Ruales, but that demands renewed efforts to further build common platforms to hold successful global negotiations, “but individual initiatives will hardly be enforced.”

Negotiations are complicated, he adds, but they have proven it is possible to advance towards what should become the future of humanity relaying on savvy proposals.

Phi Beta Iota: A great deal appears to be happening south of the US border, the most obvious attribute of which is the absence of the US — and one supposes — the obliviousness of the US. Hybrid governance is emergent, and it is routing around the US Government. Others doing the same thing include the African Union (behind the scenes, while they play Africa Command as a “useful idiot”), the Paris-Berlin-Moscow axis, the rapidly evolving Iran-Turkey-Pakistan axis, and of course the continuing global — and highly nuanced as well as xtremely well-informed — Chinese advances across all domains. For the many who are unaware of CELAC, it is OAS without the US and Canada.