The truth at any cost lowers all other costs — curated by former US spy Robert David Steele.
SECRECY NEWS EXTRACT:
DOD CONTRACTORS IN AFGHANISTAN AT A RECORD HIGH
The number of private security contractors employed by the Department of Defense in Afghanistan has reached a new record high, according to DoD statistics in a recently updated report (pdf) from the Congressional Research Service.
Continue reading “Afghanistan: Too Many Contractors, No Accountability”
There is no doubt that, Pentagon Labyrinth is a first rate piece of work. However it did fail to mention an additional factor in defense procurement costs that is often overlooked and that is the need to subsidize U.S. defense industry giants such as Lockheed Martin, Northrop-Grumman and General Dynamics. This also explains the over elaborate use of sub-contracting since the boutique sub-contractors used by the defense giants often produce key components for weapon systems so also must be given a portion of the subsidies. Boeing is the only major defense contractor that even makes a pretense of also dealing in commercial aircraft. Lockheed, Northrop, and General Dynamics along with their networks of sub-contractors are virtually entirely dependent on government contracts or contracts from the government’s foreign clients for their continued existence.
Continue reading “Pentagon Contractors Baby Gaga on Steroids”
You know that an era is over when the speakers at TED are dominated by people like General MacChrystal.
I get it – coolness, celebrity, and schmoozing will save the world. No actual work is required. Just conferences for people who no longer do any actual work. Bertolt Brecht would recognize Berlin in the 1930's.
As Posted to Closed List of Real Pioneers
Phi Beta Iota: We have 80 active contributors, and tend to defer to the original intent, but this is a spiritual commentary with a cultural point that is valid, but over the top on dismissing the 80% of TED that is wonderous–such as our most respected TED Video to date, TED: Sugata Mitra–The child-driven education. The above is a strong signal for TED, nothing more, nothing less.
Disclaimer: Werther is my good friend, but that said, the attached is an excellent review, IMO.
Chuck Spinney
Imperial Hubris: A Review of The Pentagon Labyrinth
By Werther
Electric Politics, March 6, 2011 12:33 PM
* Werther is the pen name of a Northern Virginia-based defense analyst.
In a recent radio interview, the British historian Timothy Garton Ash stated that his overall impression of the United States was one of dynamism and entrepreneurial spirit, such as in the Silicon Valley. But Washington, D.C., he said, reminded him of Moscow in the former Soviet Union.
In the context of the interview, he probably intended that as a criticism of the U.S. capital as being stagnant, status quo, and wedded to obsolete theories. But in a more pointed way he may not have consciously meant, it is equally true that Washington is remarkably like late-Brezhnev era Moscow in the sense of being very visibly the capital of a garrison state. With its billboard adverts for fighter aircraft in local Metro stations, radio spots recruiting for “the National Clandestine Service,” its ubiquitous Jersey Wall checkpoints, and its electronic freeway signs admonishing motorists to report suspicious activity (whatever that may be), the District of Columbia quite accurately simulates the paranoid atmosphere of a cold war era capital of Eastern Europe, say, East Berlin or Bucharest, albeit at two orders of magnitude greater cost.
The declassified version of my 1968 Studies in Intelligence article can be found in a couple of different formats under “Jack Davis, Bogotazo.” Please post it. I think this is my first published work.
Take a look at the conclusions of an article I wrote 43 years ago, and substitute “North Africa” for “Latin America” and “al Qa’ida” for “Communists.”
Jack
APPROVED FOR RELEASE 1994 CIA HISTORICAL REVIEW PROGRAM 2 JULY 96
SECRET
Distant events shape the craft of intelligence.
Jack Davis
On the afternoon of 9 April 1948, angry mobs suddenly and swiftly reduced the main streets of Bogotá to a smoking ruin. Radio broadcasts, at times with unmistakable Communist content, called for the overthrow of the Colombian government and of “Yankee Imperialism.” Many rioters wore red arm bands; some waved banners emblazoned with the hammer-and-sickle. A mob gutted the main floor of the Capitola Nacional, disrupting the deliberations of the Ninth International Conference of American States and forcing Secretary of State Marshall and the other delegates to take cover. The army regained control of the city over the next day or two. But not before several thousand Colombians had been killed. It was the bogotazo.
March 1, 2011, 12:01 a.m. EST
By Paul B. Farrell, MarketWatch
Phi Beta Iota: Highlights include extimate that US is 44 trillion in debt; that nothing and Administration does will stop Wall Street–this is now so bad the author believes a revolution (as in swarming homes and offices and demanding the return of ill-gotten wealth) will do. We do not agree. Yes, it is bad. No, recovering the stolen money will not do. The silver lining in all this is the obvious decrepitude of governments and corporations; the now obvious toxic nature of information asymmetries and data pathologies; and the less obvious but emergent need for a) restoring the integrity of the US Electoral process through Electoral Reform 2.2 ; and b) creating the Autonomous Internet so as to achieve Panarchy and create a prosperous world at peace in which transparency eliminates corruption, fraud, waste, and abuse, starting in the USA.
READ ORIGINAL POST WITH FOUR TIME BOMBS DEFINED
Safety Copy of Entire Story Below the Line
