Public Intelligence Blog – Page 2997 – The truth at any cost lowers all other costs — curated by former US spy Robert David Steele.

2011/12/04

Theophilis Goodyear: Equal Voice! Break the Corporate Mega-Media Dictatorship by Reintroducing the Wagner-Hatfield Amendment

07 Other Atrocities, Civil Society, Commerce, Counter-Oppression/Counter-Dictatorship Practices, InfoOps (IO)

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Equal Voice! Break the Corporate Mega-Media Dictatorship by Reintroducing the Wagner-Hatfield Amendment

The Wagner-Hatfield Amendment was a proposed amendment to the Communications Act of 1934, sponsored by senators Robert F. Wagner, Democrat, of New York and Henry D. Hatfield, Republican, of West Virginia. The amendment would have reserved 25% of all radio stations for non-profit radio broadcasters, including universities. The amendment was enthusiastically supported by educators. Of course it was vigorously attacked by the for-profit radio lobby.

The amendment almost passed but was defeated. If the amendment were reintroduced and passed, it would effectively break the corporate mega-media monopoly. Universities would be more likely than corporations to give alternate voices a chance to be heard.

Using the internet to challenge the corporate mega-media view of things is an admirable use of the internet. But why should we accept that inherent disadvantage? Reintroduce the Wagner-Hatfield amendment and pass it, and the disadvantage will disappear overnight. There were no TV stations when the amendment was proposed. But today it would have to include them to be fair. If universities had their own TV stations they could reach far more people than the average blog. And if they had of had equal access to media since 1934, American history might be quite different.

“Equal Voice” should become an issue of emergent democracy. The average voter doesn't have an equal voice even with their elected representatives, because campaign contributions talk louder. And media outlets have an even louder voice than politicians, who are limited to C-SPAN and periodic coverage by mainstream media of things like press conferences and State of the Union addresses. The public voice is effectively stifled by the arrangement.

No. Equal voice needs to mean equal access to media! That's the only way voters will ever be able to effectively challenge a system that is stacked against them. All we need is a little volume so that our voices can be heard as loudly as the collective voice of mega-media corporations. The Wagner-Hatfield amendment might be just the crowbar we need to pry an opening in the iron wall of corporate mega-media control and give disenfranchised American voters the voice they have long been denied.

2011/12/042012/02/06

Marcus Aurelius: Col Paul Yingling, Departing

Cultural Intelligence, Ethics, Military, Officers Call

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Marcus-Aurelius-150x150 — Marcus Aurelius

I've never met COL Yingling, but he is somewhat famous (infamous?) within the Army. He has survived his earlier article, provided second below, and even gotten promoted, apparently recently. So now he's sitting in a somewhat idyllic spot, specifically Garmisch, a couple of years short of qualifying to retire as a colonel. He's again frustrated and, as he explains first below, is punching out in a few months to teach social studies. I don't know where he's going to teach, but, having served as a high school teacher, I'm not sure it's going to be the attractive situation seems to be expecting. I wonder how he'd feel after some experience teaching in places like Washington, DC or Baltimore and dealing with genuinely irrational parents.

Phi Beta Iota: Another Marine Corps Colonel, Walter J. Breede III, USNA 1968, made the same choice. When you have integrity to the nth degree, you cannot live with the cognitive dissonance that comes with drinking the kool-aid. Below in complete full text online are both Col Yingling's new article, and his original article on “The Failure of Generalship.” Click on his photo for access to his biography and other publications.

Washington Post, December 4, 2011
Pg. B2

Why I'm Leaving The Military For A Social Studies Classroom

Army Col. Paul Yingling says he would rather teach kids than advise generals

I'm a colonel in the U.S. Army, and next summer I will retire to teach high school social studies. My friends think I'm crazy, and they may have a point.

Colonel is the last rank before general's stars, and it comes with significant perks. My pay is triple the national average teacher's teacher salary. Military budgets have doubled over the past last decade, while school districts have slashed funding, increased class sizes, cut programs and laid off teachers. The social status accorded to the military is wonderful, while teachers are routinely pilloried by politicians and pundits for student outcomes that are often driven by events and conditions far beyond the schoolhouse door.

Continue reading “Marcus Aurelius: Col Paul Yingling, Departing”

2011/12/04

David Swanson: 70 Years of Lies About Pearl Harbor

04 Inter-State Conflict, 07 Other Atrocities, 08 Wild Cards, 10 Security, Blog Wisdom, Civil Society, Corruption, Cultural Intelligence, DoD, Government, IO Deeds of War, Media, Military, Officers Call

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70 Years of Lying About Pearl Harbor

By davidswanson

WarIsACrime.org, 04 December 2011

British Prime Minister Winston Churchill's fervent hope for years was that Japan would attack the United States. This would permit the United States (not legally, but politically) to fully enter World War II in Europe, as its president wanted to do, as opposed to merely providing weaponry and assisting in targeting of submarines as it had been doing. Of course, Germany's declaration of war, which followed Pearl Harbor and the immediate U.S. declaration of war on Japan, helped as well, but it was Pearl Harbor that radically converted the American people from opposition to support for war.

President Franklin Delano Roosevelt had tried lying to the American people about U.S. ships including the Greer and the Kerny, which had been helping British planes track German submarines, but which Roosevelt pretended had been innocently attacked. Roosevelt also lied that he had in his possession a secret Nazi map planning the conquest of South America, as well as a secret Nazi plan for replacing all religions with Nazism. And yet, the people of the United States didn't buy the idea of going into another war until Pearl Harbor, by which point Roosevelt had already instituted the draft, activated the National Guard, created a huge Navy in two oceans, traded old destroyers to England in exchange for the lease of its bases in the Caribbean and Bermuda, and — just 11 days before the “unexpected” attack — he had secretly ordered the creation of a list of every Japanese and Japanese-American person in the United States.

Continue reading “David Swanson: 70 Years of Lies About Pearl Harbor”

2011/12/042011/12/04

Robert Steele: Cutting the US Military Budget – and Firing the Civilian and Uniformed “Leaders” Betraying the Public Trust + RECAP

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On those rare occasions when two of our contributing editors hold diametrically opposite views, I am asked to come back and blend them. Here are my premises, followed by a selection of articles that represent both sides of the argument.

1. Neither Barack Obama nor Leon Panetta have a clue. They are posturing on the basis of domestic politics both because that is how they want to do things, and because there is no coherent credible intelligence to be had within the U.S. Government. To Obama's credit, he is holding fast on vetoing any bills seeking to overturn the hard-fought agreement to trigger automatic cuts in defense co-equal to cuts in entitlements.

2. It is not possible for the US Government to continue to borrow one trillion dollars a year and to continue to be so corrupt that both political parties agree on one thing and one thing only: that they both love the two-party monopoly privilege of continuing to loot the public treasury in order to enrich themselves at taxpayer expense.

3. The Pentagon is the most monstrously ineffective organization on the planet, exceeding the fraud, waste, and abuse of any or even all of the dictators by at least one order of magnitude. The Pentagon has no strategy, no serious operational campaign plan for any region, and is unable to design, build, deliver, provision, and fight a ship or complex aircraft with any semblance of integrity. The fact that the Department of State is an empty shell and that the Office of Management and Budget cannot spell “management” makes the Pentagon's incapacity all the more treacherous.

4. Nothing will change at the Pentagon until the general public goes on strike to demand the Electoral Reform Act of 2012 and to insist that its provisions be upheld. Absent an honest President and an honest Congress, the Pentagon will continue to remain the biggest slush fund for corruption in the US Government, joined by the Department of Homeland Security and the long-standing energy, health, and prison complexes.

5. Worse, while the Pentagon maneuvers to hype the China threat, it is also supporting an Israeli-led endeavor to start a regional war with Iran. This degree of irresponsibility is in my view impeachable treason. It betrays the public trust in every possible way–our civilian and uniformed “leaders” are in my judgment in direct violation of their Oath to support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies domestic and foreign. They should be fired en masse along with every dual US-Israeli citizen holding clearances, and every former Wall Street executive now serving in the US Government. This is not rocket science. All it takes is INTEGRITY; cf Journal: Politics & Intelligence–Partners Only When Integrity is Central to Both as posted 13 October 2009.

Below the line are the relevant headlines with short comments.

Continue reading “Robert Steele: Cutting the US Military Budget – and Firing the Civilian and Uniformed “Leaders” Betraying the Public Trust + RECAP”

2011/12/042012/12/16

Thomas Briggs: No, China Does Not Have 3,000 Nuclear Weapons (Nor Does CIA Have Clandestine Assets Anywhere Relevant)

02 China, 10 Security, Academia, Budgets & Funding, Corruption, Director of National Intelligence et al (IC), DoD, Government, IO Deeds of War, Military, Peace Intelligence

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Here is another posting related to this topic to balance the earlier piece from the Washington Post.

No, China Does Not Have 3,000 Nuclear Weapons

A study from Georgetown University incorrectly suggests that China has 3,000 nuclear weapons.The estimate is off by an order of magnitude.

By Hans M. Kristensen

EXTRACT:

According to the International Panel on Fissile Materials, China has produced an estimated 2 tons of plutonium for weapons. Some has been consumed in nuclear tests, leaving roughly 1.8 tons. The estimate is consistent with what the U.S. government has stated and theoretically enough for 450-600 warheads.

Total production of HEU is thought to have been approximately 20 tons. Some has been spent in nuclear tests and research reactor fuel, leaving a stockpile of some 16 tons. That’s theoretically enough for roughly 640-1,060 warheads.

Another critical material is Tritium, which is used in thermonuclear weapons. China probably only produces enough Tritium at its High-Flux Engineering Test Reactor (HFETR) in Jiajiang to maintain an arsenal of about 300 weapons.

The U.S. intelligence community concluded in 2009 that China likely has produced enough weapon-grade fissile material to meet its needs for the immediate future. In other words, no vast warhead expansion is in sight.

Howard Rheingold: Replace Email with Wiki-Collaboration

Advanced Cyber/IO

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How to replace email collaboration with wiki co-creation (Part one)

Introduction: When collaborating by email, a lot has to happen.

It is no secret that big companies still uses email as their main collaborative tool. And this habit won’t change any time soon. Changing the office culture and the habits of maybe hundreds of employees may take years. But technology has moved on, and so should we. One step at a time. There are smarter and more time efficient technologies available today such as the enterprise wiki and we should all embrace it.

DefDog: DHS Comedy of Errors on Water-Pump “Hack”

10 Security, Corruption, DHS, Government, IO Impotency

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If there is ever a story to validate the reduction of spending in the
intelligence community, this would be it……….

Exclusive: Comedy of Errors Led to False ‘Water-Pump Hack’ Report

It was the broken water pump heard ’round the world.

Cyberwar watchers took notice this month when a leaked intelligence memo claimed Russian hackers had remotely destroyed a water pump at an Illinois utility. The report spawned dozens of sensational stories characterizing it as the first-ever reported destruction of U.S. infrastructure by a hacker. Some described it as America’s very own Stuxnet attack.

Except, it turns out, it wasn’t. Within a week of the report’s release, DHS bluntly contradicted the memo, saying that it could find no evidence that a hack occurred. In truth, the water pump simply burned out, as pumps are wont to do, and a government-funded intelligence center incorrectly linked the failure to an internet connection from a Russian IP address months earlier.

Read full article with two photos.

More reporting on this event, with some detail showing the lack of “intelligence” within this intelligence activity…….

America's critical infrastructure security response system is broken

Following SCADA water utility ‘hack', is the reporting system in need of re-thinking?

By Ellen Messmer | Network World US | Published: 16:01, 02 December 2011

The flap over the reported water utility hack in Illinois begs the question: Is the reporting system that the US has set up to identify cyberattacks on critical infrastructure broken and in need of re-thinking?

Read full article.