Reference: WikiLeaks and Al Qaeda as Open Source Insurgencies

10 Security, 11 Society, Blog Wisdom, Civil Society, Counter-Oppression/Counter-Dictatorship Practices, Cultural Intelligence, Ethics, Money, Banks & Concentrated Wealth, Officers Call, Peace Intelligence, Power Behind-the-Scenes/Special Interests, Reform, Strategy, Threats

Journal: The Security and Secrecy “Tax” – Global Guerrillas

By John Robb at Global Guerrillas (Networked tribes, systems disruption, and the emerging bazaar of violence. Resilient Communities, decentralized platforms, and self-organizing futures)

Wikileaks and Al Qaeda's Open Source Jihad are both open source insurgencies. While there are obvious differences between the two, what's more interesting is how they are similar. Namely: as open source insurgencies both groups use systems disruption (the ability…

Tip of the Hat to Mario Profaca at Facebook.

Phi Beta Iota: The deeper interpretation of the similarity of Al Qaeda and WikiLeaks is that they are both finding huge audiences for what they are offering, and they are both playing off of a massive public distaste for Open Veins of Latin America, Killing Hope, Rule by Secrecy, Sorrows of Empire, Web of Deceit, The Fifty Year Wound, etc. The USA has created its enemies because of its hubris and the corruption inherent in how it has supported dictators and predatory immoral capitalism, imposing virtual colonialism and unilateral militarism, all without regard to either the rights of the indigenous parties treated as “collateral damage” or the interests of the American citizen-voter-taxpayer whose blood, treasure, and spirit have been consumed by an elite class that comprises an “Other Atrocity” on a global scale. It troubles us that there is no one in the Administration with the intellectual breadth of mind and the intestinal fortitude to point out to President Barack Obama that he has a game-changing choice in front of him. We (the 800 contributors, 80 active, 8 frequent) of Phi Beta Iota have always been open, honest, and loyal–these insurgencies are occurring because the US Government failed to heed the early warnings that began in the 1970's and reached a crecsendo in the 1990's. There is still time for Barack Obama to Change the Game!

Legitimate Grievances Part II (Global versus US Government)

Reference: No Labels “Non-Party” = “Four More Years” for Wall Street

Reference: Crash Course on Reality

Journal: Taliban Laughing–the Clowns Dance On…

Journal: Debt, Defense, and the Diem Moment in AF

Worth a Look: Book Reviews on Elite Rule

Worth a Look: Book Reviews on Empire as Cancer Including Betrayal & Deceit

2010/11/282010/11/28

Journal: US Secret Intelligence Tasking US Diplomats

02 Diplomacy, Corruption, Cultural Intelligence, Government, InfoOps (IO), Intelligence (government), IO Secrets, Methods & Process, Officers Call

Marcus-Aurelius-150x150 — Marcus Aurelius Recommends

Insofar as I know, the DoD military Services remain under broad and explicit proscription from accessing the Wikileaks site or the Wikileaks releases in any form. Some of the Service directives are very intimidating, threatening court martials for military members, loss of security clearances, etc., etc. From the broadcast media, it appears that major lockdowns of information will shortly follow. And SPC Bradley Manning, currently confined at Quantico, will probably walk as, I suspect, will Hasan at Fort Hood. MA

Phi Beta Iota: This demonstrates that the National Clandestine Service (NCS) is completely ignorant of what can be known through open sources, and that the Secretary of State is not doing her job of assuring that diplomacy is not micro-tasked into what are clearly clandestine and covert operations support functions absolutely not appropriate to diplomatic status. These people should not have message release authority. The US Government needs a total make-over. First, however, CIA needs a director that is fully capable on day one.

U.S. Expands Role of Diplomats in Spying

By MARK MAZZETTI

November 28, 2010

WASHINGTON — The United States has expanded the role of American diplomats in collecting intelligence overseas and at the United Nations, ordering State Department personnel to gather the credit card and frequent-flier numbers, work schedules and other personal information of foreign dignitaries.

Revealed in classified State Department cables, the directives, going back to 2008, appear to blur the traditional boundaries between statesmen and spies.

The cables give a laundry list of instructions for how State Department employees can fulfill the demands of a “National Humint Collection Directive” in specific countries. (“Humint” is spy-world jargon for human intelligence collection.) One cable asks officers overseas to gather information about “office and organizational titles; names, position titles and other information on business cards; numbers of telephones, cellphones, pagers and faxes,” as well as “internet and intranet ‘handles’, internet e-mail addresses, web site identification-URLs; credit card account numbers; frequent-flier account numbers; work schedules, and other relevant biographical information.”

Philip J. Crowley, a State Department spokesman, on Sunday disputed that American diplomats had assumed a new role overseas.

Read the rest of this sad story….

2010/11/252010/11/25

Journal: Vacation in Afghanistan, Fight NATO

04 Inter-State Conflict, 05 Civil War, 08 Wild Cards, 10 Security, 11 Society, Cultural Intelligence, Officers Call

Taliban-fighters-in-Dhani-007 — Taliban fighters in Dhani-Ghorri in northern Afghanistan. Photograph: Ghaith Abdul-Ahad for the Guardian

UK-based Taliban spend months fighting Nato forces in Afghanistan

Taliban fighter reveals he lives for most of year in London and heads to Afghanistan for combat

Special report: Taliban troop with a London cab driver

British-based men of Afghan origin are spending months at a time in Afghanistan fighting Nato forces before returning to the UK, the Guardian has learned. They also send money to the Taliban.

A Taliban fighter in Dhani-Ghorri in northern Afghanistan last month told the Guardian he lived most of the time in east London, but came to Afghanistan for three months of the year for combat.

“I work as a minicab driver,” said the man, who has the rank of a mid-level Taliban commander. “I make good money there [in the UK], you know. But these people are my friends and my family and it's my duty to come to fight the jihad with them.”

“There are many people like me in London,” he added. “We collect money for the jihad all year and come and fight if we can.”

Tip of the Hat to Robert Young Pelton at Facebook.

2010/11/252010/11/25

Journal: Can’t Get No Satisfaction from US Intelligence Community…

04 Inter-State Conflict, 05 Civil War, 07 Other Atrocities, 08 Wild Cards, 10 Security, Budgets & Funding, Corruption, Cultural Intelligence, Government, Intelligence (government), Methods & Process, Money, Banks & Concentrated Wealth, Officers Call, Power Behind-the-Scenes/Special Interests, Strategy

Dowd says it pretty well. My guess is that because CIA connsiders ISI an “asset”, they insist that no one including themsleves target the ISI. This of course means that ISI can continue using CIA and the U.S. as pawns in thier undeclared cold war against India.
Op-Ed Columnist

The Great Game Imposter

By MAUREEN DOWD

The New York Times

Published: November 23, 2010

And we wonder why we haven’t found Osama bin Laden.

Though we’re pouring billions into intelligence in Afghanistan, we can’t even tell the difference between a no-name faker and a senior member of the Taliban. The tragedy of Afghanistan has descended into farce.

. . . . . . .

Just as with Saddam and W.M.D., or groping and the T.S.A., we get no satisfaction for the $80 billion a year we spend on intelligence. Or we get fake information like Curveball that leads us into spending trillions more on a trumped-up war. Last year, seven top C.I.A. officials were fooled by a Jordanian double-agent who got onto an American base in Khost and blew all of them up. Our agents in the “wilderness of mirrors” may not be up to le Carré, but can’t they learn to Google, or at least watch “The Ipcress File”?

Who knows? Maybe we’ve been dealing with bin Laden all along. Maybe he’s been coming and going under a different moniker. As far as our intelligence experts are concerned, a turban and beard are just a turban and beard.

Read entire article…highly recommended.

Phi Beta Iota: What is not properly emphasized above is that most of the budget is spent on technical collection and beltway bandit vapor ware, with no one held accountable for massive failures, be they by Lockheed, SAIC, CSC, or what-have you. CIA is at best $10 billion, of which at least 75% is sheer waste, fraud, and abuse. What it does in the way of “intelligence” we could do for $100 million a year, and we could do it faster, better, cheaper and for 1000 times more individual consumers. Neither are intelligence officials held accountable for failure (96% of the time) by Congress or the White House because both the Intelligence Community and the Pentagon are nothing more than pork gone rancid. Leon Panetta could have been the greatest director of CIA in history with his unique background as White House Chief of Staff, Director of the Office of Management and Budget, and Representative. Similar Jim Clapper could have been the first real Director of National Intelligence. The lack of vision, initiative, accountability, and productivity at the top of the US secret world is quite extraordinary. This is how the White House and Congress want it to be. This is “blessed dysfunctionality” profitable for those who feast at the taxpayer's expense, and most assuredly not in the public interest. That's how it is. That is how it will remain absent President Obama choosing to remake himself, or America demanding Electoral Reform, a Coalition Cabinet, and a Balanced Budget in 2010. We are in the Dark Ages of modern American faux-governance.

See Also:

Journal: CIA Does It Again….

Reference: American Tragedy–Another Free Ride for Pentagon

Journal: Death by a Thousand Cuts? Or Deliberate Elite Murder of the USA?

2010/11/252010/11/25

Journal: China & Russia Dump US Dollar in Bi-Lateral Trading

02 China, 06 Russia, Commerce, Commercial Intelligence, Cultural Intelligence, Government, Money, Banks & Concentrated Wealth, Strategy

China, Russia quit dollar

By Su Qiang and Li Xiaokun (China Daily)

Updated: 2010-11-24 08:02

St. Petersburg, Russia – China and Russia have decided to renounce the US dollar and resort to using their own currencies for bilateral trade, Premier Wen Jiabao and his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin announced late on Tuesday.

Chinese experts said the move reflected closer relations between Beijing and Moscow and is not aimed at challenging the dollar, but to protect their domestic economies.”About trade settlement, we have decided to use our own currencies,” Putin said at a joint news conference with Wen in St. Petersburg.

. . . . . .

russia china — Premier Wen Jiabao shakes hands with his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin on a visit to St. Petersburg on Tuesday.ALEXEY DRUZHININ / AFP

The documents covered cooperation on aviation, railroad construction, customs, protecting intellectual property, culture and a joint communiqu. Details of the documents have yet to be released.

. . . . . .

Wen said at the press conference that the partnership between Beijing and Moscow has “reached an unprecedented level” and pledged the two countries will “never become each other's enemy”.

2010/11/202010/11/20

Review (Guest): America by Heart–Reflections on Family, Faith, and Flag

11 Society, 5 Star, America (Founders, Current Situation), Civil Society, Civil Society, Congress (Failure, Reform), Consciousness & Social IQ, Counter-Oppression/Counter-Dictatorship Practices, Cultural Intelligence, Culture, Research, Democracy, Economics, Executive (Partisan Failure, Reform), Impeachment & Treason, Intelligence (Public), Misinformation & Propaganda, Peace, Poverty, & Middle Class, Politics, Power (Pathologies & Utilization), Priorities, Reform, Values, Ethics, Sustainable Evolution, Voices Lost (Indigenous, Gender, Poor, Marginalized)

Sarah Palin Book ‘America By Heart' Hits Obama, Defends Actions (ADVANCE EXCERPTS)

Sam Stein and Lisa Shapiro, Huffington Post

19 November 2010

In her newest book, former Alaska Governor Sarah Palin sharply criticizes the record of President Barack Obama while defending her own, in the process offering an unapologetic vision of conservative politics that strongly suggests a forthcoming presidential run.

“America by Heart,” which will be officially released on Tuesday (The Huffington Post obtained an advance copy), exhibits Palin in a variety of roles: culture warrior, presidential critic, committed mother and political provocateur. Clocking in at roughly 270 pages, it reads, at times, like an episode of Glenn Beck's Fox News show. Lengthy quotes and historical research is threaded, often, around contemporary political debates. In the mind's eye of the former governor, the founders, were they alive today, would be nothing short of Palin devotees — and they would certainly be shocked by Obama.

The president makes infrequent appearances in Palin's book, but when he does surface it is in an unflattering light.

“There is a narcissism in our leaders in Washington today,” Palin writes. “There's a quasi-religious feeling to the message coming from them. They are trying to convince us that not only are they our saviors, but that we are our saviors… as candidate Obama proclaimed on Super Tuesday 2008, ‘We are the ones we've been waiting for, we are the change that we seek.'”

Obama, as Palin posits, is neither providing the change that was sought nor fulfilling the role of savior he supposedly promised. Instead, he is cast as a wealth re-distributor, a sly practitioner, and, above all else, a politician with policies antithetical to American values. This is true, she argues, on matters large and small.

View Book Page at Amazon

Read Original Article at Huffington Post

Balance of Article Below the Line (Safety Copy)

Continue reading “Review (Guest): America by Heart–Reflections on Family, Faith, and Flag”

2010/11/172010/11/17

Journal: Chomsky on Mid-Term Elections

07 Other Atrocities, 11 Society, Civil Society, Corruption, Cultural Intelligence, Power Behind-the-Scenes/Special Interests, Reform

I have rather mixed opinions of Chomsky, but think he is on the mark in this OpEd.

The US Elections: Outrage, Misguided

truthout

17 November 2010

Noam Chomsky

The U.S. midterm elections register a level of anger, fear and disillusionment in the country like nothing I can recall in my lifetime. Since the Democrats are in power, they bear the brunt of the revulsion over our current socioeconomic and political situation.

More than half the “mainstream Americans” in a Rasmussen poll last month said they view the Tea Party movement favorably – a reflection of the spirit of disenchantment.

Noam Chomsky

The grievances are legitimate. For more than 30 years, real incomes for the majority of the population have stagnated or declined while work hours and insecurity have increased, along with debt. Wealth has accumulated, but in very few pockets, leading to unprecedented inequality.

These consequences mainly spring from the financialization of the economy since the 1970s and the corresponding hollowing-out of domestic production. Spurring the process is the deregulation mania favored by Wall Street and supported by economists mesmerized by efficient-market myths.

Read full article…

Phi Beta Iota: Emphasis added above. The chapter on “Legitimate Grievances” in ELECTION 2008: Lipstick on the Pig (EIN, 2008) comes in two parts–domestic grievances warranting state nullification of federal abuse, and state consideration of secession if the legitimate Constitutionally-derived Republic cannot be restored; and global grievances occasioned by a century of unilateral militarism, virtual colonialism, and predatory capitalism working in unison to loot the commonwealths of all nations–our elite corrupted the other elites, and between them they have come very close to destroying what should be a prosperous world at peace.

Structured Reading on Reality:

Worth a Look: Book Review Lists (Negative)

Worth a Look: Book Review Lists (Positive)

See Also by Chomsky:

Journal: Up to 90 percent of US paper money [in large cities] contains traces of cocaine

Review: What We Say Goes

Review: Interventions

Review: Failed States–The Abuse of Power and the Assault on Democracy (American Empire Project)

Review: Imperial Ambitions–Conversations on the Post-9/11 World (American Empire Project)

Review: Hegemony or Survival–America’s Quest for Global Dominance (The American Empire Project)

Review: The Umbrella of U.S. Power–The Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the Contradictions of U.S. Policy

Review: Profit Over People–Neoliberalism & Global Order