If Saudi rulers had more brains, they might be formidably dangerous. Even with lackluster intelligence assets, they are already causing enough havoc and bloodshed across the Middle East and North Africa regions, pouring millions-of-dollars-worth of weaponry into Al Qaeda and other Takfiri networks that are destroying once proud civilizations in Iraq, Lebanon, Syria and Libya through nihilistic sectarianism.

And if the Saudi paymasters of terrorism could have it all their way, they would salivate at the chance of extending this destruction to Iran – the Shia power that they fear as their nemesis.

Fortunately, the Saudi rulers’ agenda of covert terrorism – an agenda that serves its Western masters – is not well concealed. This is because “Saudi state intelligence” is something of an oxymoron and leaves a trail of self-incriminating clues wherever it goes.

This uncovering of the real authors of regional violence and their motives curtails the plotters and will lead eventually to their downfall through their own damnation.

Take the latest disclosure that the Saudis tried to bribe Russia into abandoning its long-time ally, Syria. Given their own venal form of feudal rule, the Saudis seem to think that everyone else can be bought at a price. Apparently, Saudi Arabia’s intelligence chief Prince Bandar bin Sultan dangled a $15-billion arms deal in front of Russia’s President Vladimir Putin if the latter would jettison his country’s strategic alliance with Syria’s President Bashar al-Assad.

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2013/08/112013/08/11

Mini-Me: What Did the Messianic Jew Say to the Zionist? And How Did the Zionist Respond?

11 Society, Cultural Intelligence, Ethics

Huh?

What Did the Messianic Jew Say to the Zionist?

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2013/08/112013/08/11

David Swanson: Jody Williams, Vermont Girl & Nobel Laureate Who Led World to Ban Landmines

Ethics, Peace Intelligence

Her Name Is Jody Williams

Jody Williams' new book is called My Name Is Jody Williams: A Vermont Girl's Winding Path to the Nobel Peace Prize, and it's a remarkable story by a remarkable person. It's also a very well-told autobiography, including in the early childhood chapters in which there are few hints of the activism to come.

. . . . . . .

What strikes me most about the first half or so of Williams' book is how hard we always make it for anyone who wants to work for a better world to find appropriate employment. We dump billions into recruiting young people into the military or into business careers. Imagine if young people had to find those paths on their own. Imagine if television ads and video games and movies and spectacles at big sporting events were all used to recruit young people into nonviolent activism for peace or justice. Williams and many others could have found their way more quickly. [Emphasis added.]

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2013/08/102013/08/10

Jean Lievens: Selfish Win Short-Term Only

Collective Intelligence, Cultural Intelligence, Earth Intelligence

New game theory research: Does evolution favour jerks?

So you believe in winning at all costs, even screwing fellow colleagues to get ahead in life? Well you may be in a bit of shock. An article in Popsi.com says although the selfish can survive for a while, but according to new game theory research, long-term survival requires cooperation.

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2013/08/102013/08/10

Berto Jongman: Book of Sand — America Lost in Yemen

Cultural Intelligence, Government, Ineptitude

Book of Sand: How America’s Yemen Policy Has Come to Resemble Salih’s Disasterous Rule

The “war on terror” has, since its birth in the smoldering horror of 9/11, carried within it the seeds of deep, cynical irony. The battle cry against the enemies of freedom turned into an exercise in torture and surveillance, set against a bored backdrop of reality TV and economic catastrophe. During this wasted decade-plus, America has turned to a series of unreliable partner governments who frequently made a mockery of its goal to eliminate transnational terrorism while promoting America’s values of democracy and human rights. They illuminated the horrible paradox of being the lone superpower in a time of global dislocation.

Perhaps no one represented this difficulty more than former Yemeni president Ali Abdullah Salih. Salih was one of the first allies in the “war on terror,” and one of the most confusing and unreliable friends a country can have. The U.S. never understood Salih, and in its official imagination assumed that any of his behavior was born of a particular anti-Western or pro-terrorism animus. It is therefore one of the stranger ironies that the U.S. has essentially adopted Salih’s style of crisis management in its Yemen policy.

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2013/08/10

Penguin: Fukushima and the Pacific Ocean

03 Environmental Degradation, 07 Other Atrocities, 08 Proliferation, Commerce, Corruption, Earth Intelligence, Government, Idiocy, Ineptitude, Media

Water leaks at Fukushima could contaminate entire Pacific Ocean

Two and a half years after the Fukashima tragedy Japan does not want to admit how serious it is, but it is obvious the drastic environmental implications are to follow, Harvey Wasserman, journalist and advocate for renewable energy, told RT.

RT: Japanese officials have admitted a leak at Fukushima has been happening for two years and is worse than earlier thought. Why did it take so long to evaluate the actual repercussions of the tragedy and take decisive measures to tackle them?

HW: The Japanese authorities have been covering up the true depth of the disaster because they don’t want to embarrass themselves and the global nuclear industry and they are trying to open up another nuclear plant in Japan. When the Japanese people now find out that the accident is worse than we thought and they have been leaking many tons of radioactive water into the Pacific Ocean for almost two and a half years, this is a catastrophe. Tokyo Electric has no idea how to control this accident. This is absolutely terrifying after two and a half years. To find out that these reactors have been out of control, now that they can’t control this they don’t know what’s going on. This is not a primitive backward country; this is Japan with advanced technology. It has very serious implications for nuclear power all over the world.

RT: Why the plant's operator failed to contain the leak?

HW: Because they don’t know what to do. This has never happened before. You have three explosions; you have four nuclear reactors that are severely compromised. No one ever planned for this. This is an apocalyptic event. This is something that could contaminate the entire Pacific Ocean. It is extremely serious. The reality is that Tokyo Electric does not know what is happening and does not know how to control what is going on. Our entire planet is at risk here. This is two and a half years after these explosions and they are still in the dark. It’s terrifying.

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2013/08/09

Marcus Aurelius: Ode to the Chopper Pilots

Cultural Intelligence, Ethics, Military

For those who have not seen. Most of us have significant experience with the Huey. In my case, my takeoffs exceed by a considerable number my landings in the airframe. Some of us know Ranger Nightengale personally. Some of us have been involved in emergency landings or other aircraft mishaps. Some of us owe something, perhaps a lot, to a pilot or aircrew.

The Sound that Binds

by Keith Nightingale

SWJ Blog Post | October 5, 2012 – 8:12pm

Unique to all that served in Vietnam is the UH1H helicopter. It was both devil and angel and it served as both extremely well. Whether a LRRP, US or RVN soldier or civilian, whether, NVA, VC, Allied or civilian, it provided a sound and sense that lives with us all today. It is the one sound that immediately clears the clouds of time and freshens the forgotten images within our mind. It will be the sound track of our last moments on earth. It was a simple machine-a single engine, a single blade and four man crew-yet like the Model T, it transformed us all and performed tasks the engineers and designers never imagined. For soldiers, it was the worst and best of friends but it was the one binding material in a tapestry of a war of many pieces.

The smell was always hot, filled with diesel fumes, sharp drafts accentuated by gritty sand, laterite and anxious vibrations. It always held the spell of the unknown and the anxiety of learning what was next and what might be. It was an unavoidable magnet for the heavily laden soldier who donkey-trotted to its squat shaking shape through the haze and blast of dirt, stepped on the OD skid, turned and dropped his ruck on the cool aluminum deck. Reaching inside with his rifle or machine gun, a soldier would grasp a floor ring with a finger as an extra precaution of physics for those moments when the now airborne bird would break into a sharp turn revealing all ground or all sky to the helpless riders all very mindful of the impeding weight on their backs. The relentless weight of the ruck combined with the stress of varying motion caused fingers and floor rings to bind almost as one. Constant was the vibration, smell of hydraulic fluid, flashes of visionary images and the occasional burst of a ground-fed odor-rotting fish, dank swampy heat, cordite or simply the continuous sinuous currents of Vietnam’s weather-cold and driven mist in the Northern monsoon or the wall of heated humidity in the southern dry season. Blotting it out and shading the effect was the constant sound of the single rotating blade as it ate a piece of the air, struggling to overcome the momentary physics of the weather.

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Category: Collaboration Zones

4th Media: Saudis Pour Money Into Militants