Peace Intelligence – Page 375 – Public Intelligence Blog

2011/12/042012/12/16

Thomas Briggs: Georgetown Students Scoop Secret World on China’s Tunnel System for Nuclear Weapons – or a PSYOP Against US Public?

02 China, 04 Education, 04 Inter-State Conflict, 07 Other Atrocities, 10 Security, Academia, Corruption, Government, IO Deeds of War, Military, Peace Intelligence

A wonderful example of what can be done with open source material!

Georgetown students shed light on China’s tunnel system for nuclear weapons

By William Wan

Washington Post, November 29, 2011

The Chinese have called it their “Underground Great Wall” — a vast network of tunnels designed to hide their country’s increasingly sophisticated missile and nuclear arsenal.

For the past three years, a small band of obsessively dedicated students at Georgetown University has called it something else: homework.

Read full article.

Phi Beta Iota: The ability of students to excel in relations to spies is not knew, even with hard targets such as China. For decades this web site and its antecedents have been saying “Do not send a spy where a schoolboy can go.” HOWEVER, in this specific case, with China as the target and the Pentagon budget on the line, there is a very high probability that the students are unwitting dupes in an illegal PSYOP being used to create an unethical justification for an ideological and political build-up against China, while protecting the bloated and extraordinarily corrupt Pentagon budget from the mandatory reductions agreed to in relation to the crisis at hand. Bottom line: the students have earned an A but the integrity of this endeavor is suspect.

2011/12/04

Chuck Spinney: Is Iran an Enemy of the Arabs? NO!

02 Diplomacy, 05 Iran, 08 Wild Cards, 09 Justice, 10 Security, 11 Society, Corruption, Government, IO Impotency, Peace Intelligence

The West, especially the United States, and Israel are stoking the grand-strategic fires in Middle East by trying to intensify the conflict between the Sunnis and the Shias. As Patrick Seale explains in this important essay, our leaders are playing very a dangerous, and I would add, ‘dirty' game — but the United States are on the cusp of Presidential election year in the United States and Obama's narrow vision of triangulating the Republicans in the domestic politics of foreign policy [1] is trumping the criteria for shaping a sensible grand strategy.

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[1] A pathbreaking book outlining how domestic politics shaped American foreign policy between the Spanish-American War and the Cold War is Robert Dallek's, The American Style of Foreign Policy: Cultural Politics and Foreign Affairs.

Chuck Spinney
The Blaster

Is Iran the Enemy of the Arabs?

by Patrick Seale
Agence Global, 29 Nov 2011

EXTRACT:

It would be wise for the Arab states to look to their own interests in this matter, rather than follow the bellicose lead of the Western powers and Israel. The Arabs must surely be aware that a military clash between Iran and the United States or Israel could be disastrous for the Arab Gulf region. Sensitive installations such as oil terminals and desalination plants could come under fire. The achievements of recent decades could be wiped out.

Read full article.

2011/11/27

David Swansson: When the World Outlawed War – A Model for Occupy to Achieve Electoral Reform Act of 2012

04 Inter-State Conflict, 07 Other Atrocities, 10 Security, 11 Society, Advanced Cyber/IO, Articles & Chapters, Communities of Practice, Counter-Oppression/Counter-Dictatorship Practices, Cultural Intelligence, Ethics, IO Deeds of Peace, Officers Call, Peace Intelligence

When the World Outlawed War: An Interview with David Swanson

For those who know war only through television, criminalizing it sounds like proposing to criminalize government. But there was a time when the masses made war illegal.

Bruce E. Levine

Alternet, November 21, 2011

David Swanson’s recently released book, When the World Outlawed War, tells the story of how the highly energized peace movement in the 1920s, supported by an overwhelming majority of U.S. citizens from every level of society, was able to push politicians into something quite remarkable—the Kellogg-Briand Pact and the renunciation of war as an instrument of national policy. The 1920s “War Outlawry” movement in the United States was so popular that most politicians could not afford to oppose it.

David Swanson, since serving as press secretary in Dennis Kucinich’s 2004 presidential campaign, has emerged as one of the leading anti-war activists in the United States. While Swanson has fought against the U.S. wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and tried to alert Americans to the fact that U.S. military spending is the source of most of our economic problems, his anti-war activism goes much deeper. He wants to stigmatize militarist politicians as criminals. In his previous book War is a Lie, Swanson made the case for the abolition of war as an instrument of national policy, and When the World Outlawed War provides an historical example of just how powerful war abolitionism can be.

Bruce Levine: At a college lecture that you recently gave, you asked the students and professors if they believed war was illegal or if they had ever heard of the Kellogg-Briand Pact, and only about 2 or 3 percent of a large group raised their hands. But what really seems to have disturbed you is when you asked if war should be illegal, and only 5 percent thought that it should be.

Full Text Below for Google Translate

Continue reading “David Swansson: When the World Outlawed War – A Model for Occupy to Achieve Electoral Reform Act of 2012”

2011/11/25

Chuck Spinney: Good, Bizarre, and Ugly

04 Inter-State Conflict, 05 Civil War, 07 Other Atrocities, 08 Wild Cards, 10 Security, 11 Society, Articles & Chapters, Corruption, DoD, Government, IO Deeds of War, Military, Officers Call, Peace Intelligence

WEEKEND EDITION NOVEMBER 25-27, 2011

The Good, the Bizarre and the Ugly

AF-PAK Sitrep

by FRANKLIN C. SPINNEY, Counterpunch

It is becoming increasingly clear that the AF-PAK war will end in yet another grand strategic defeat for the United States. To date, President Obama, has been able to distract attention from this issue, but given the stakes in 2012, that dodge is unlikely to last. Get ready for an ugly debate over “who lost the Afghan War.”

To those readers who disagree with my opening line, I urge you to study Anthony Cordersman’s most recent situation report on the AF-PAK War, THE AFGHANISTAN- PAKISTAN WAR AT THE END OF 2011: Strategic Failure? Talk Without Hope? Tactical Success? Spend Not Build (And Then Stop Spending)? It was issued by the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington on November 15. Reading the report is heavy slogging but I urge readers to download and examine it — at the very least, take a few minutes to read the executive summary.

Now compare Cordesman’s systematic, detailed, and workmanlike analysis to the bizarre obscurantism peddled one week later, on 22 November, co-authored by Michael O’Hanlon (Brookings Institution) and former Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz (American Enterprise Institute) in a Wall Street Journal op-ed, entitled Defining Victory in Afghanistan.

O’Hanlon and Wolfowitz posit the bizarre thesis that the admittedly less than successful outcome against the FARC guerrillas in Columbia is a favorable model for justifying continuing business as usual in Afghanistan. Viewed through the refractions of their Columbian lens, O’Hanlon and Wolfowitz conclude, “Our current exit strategy of reducing American troops to 68,000 by the end of next summer and transferring full security responsibility to Afghan forces by 2014 is working. In a war where the U.S. has demonstrated remarkable strategic patience, we need to stay patient and resolute.”

Are O’Hanlon and Wolfowitz living on the same planet as Cordesman or do they live in some kind of parallel universe?

I submit it is latter. Here’s why –

Read full analysis.

2011/11/25

Chuck Spinney: Averting Civil War in Syria

02 Diplomacy, 05 Civil War, 06 Genocide, 07 Other Atrocities, 08 Wild Cards, 10 Security, Articles & Chapters, Corruption, Government, Military, Non-Governmental, Peace Intelligence

Patrick Seale is one of the finest and most experienced writers now reporting on the Middle East

Averting Civil War in Syria

by Patrick Seale

Agence Global, 22 Nov 2011

Syria is heading for a bloody sectarian civil war. The mutual kidnappings, torture, beheadings and displacement of populations taking place between the Sunni and Alawi communities in the central city of Homs — often described as “the capital of the revolution” — send a fearsome signal of what might be in store for the rest of the country.

To avert this descent into hell must surely be the immediate priority of Arab leaders and the international community.

The Iraqi example next door is there for all to see. The Anglo-American invasion destroyed a major Arab country. The country’s institutions and infrastructure were shattered; sectarian demons were released, triggering a civil war. Hundreds of thousands died and millions were displaced from their homes or forced to flee abroad. The country was dismembered as the Kurds established their own semi-independent statelet.

Syria needs the intervention of a high-powered, neutral, contact group to stop the killing on both sides.

John Steiner: Re-embracing Abraham’s Path

Cultural Intelligence, Geospatial, Peace Intelligence

In the footsteps and spirit of Abraham

William Ury is on a campaign to mark the path, which will run through several countries of the Middle East, an whose route will follow in the footsteps of the patriarch Abraham.

By Moshe Gilad

HAARETZ.com, 16 November 2011

EXTRACT:

The Abraham Path, which is now being marked, begins in Haran and meanders its way to the city Gaziantep. From there, it continues southward, crosses the border into Syria and wends its way to Aleppo. The path then moves south, passing through Damascus before crossing the border into the kingdom of Jordan and the city Amman. At that point it crosses over to Jericho in the Palestinian Authority, and then to Nablus, Jerusalem and Hebron, where Abraham was buried. Additional offshoots of the path follow Abraham's journeys through Iraq and Israel.

. . . . .

The route is approximately 1,200 kilometers long. The Harvard team is aware that very few people will ever hike its entire length, but in a telephone interview with Haaretz, Ury clarifies that the intent is to create among visitors to the Middle East a profound cultural experience and a familiarization with the local culture, the residents, the landscapes and the regional tradition. “Hospitality is one of the greatest legacies that our culture received from Abraham,” he says, “and when you hike or drive along the path, you feel it every day, in the best possible way.”

A tool for conflict resolution

Ury himself has twice travelled the entire route, from Haran to Hebron, and his travels have left in him a deep impression, he says. His great expertise is conflict and crisis resolution. Development of the Abraham Path is, in his opinion, a tool for resolution of the prolonged crisis in the Middle East.

Read full article.

2011/11/19

Patrick Meier: Ushandi Data to Study Micro-Conflict

Cultural Intelligence, Peace Intelligence

Using Ushahidi Data to Study the Micro-Dynamics of Violent Conflict

The field of conflict analysis has long been handicapped by the country-year straightjacket. This is beginning to change thanks to the increasing availability of subnational and sub-annual conflict data. In the past, one was limited to macro-level data, such as the number of casualties resulting from conflict in a given county and year. Today, datasets as such as the Armed Conflict Location Event Data (ACLED) provide considerably more temporal and spatial resolution. Another example is this quantitative study: ”The Micro-dynamics of Reciprocity in an Asymmetric Conflict: Hamas, Israel, and the 2008-2009 Gaza Conflict,” authored by by NYU PhD Candidate Thomas Zeitzoff.

conflict by the hour — Click on Image to Enlarge

I’ve done some work on conflict event-data and reciprocity analysis in the past (such as this study of Afghanistan), but Thomas is really breaking new ground here with the hourly temporal resolution of the conflict analysis, which was made possible by Al-Jazeera’s War on Gaza project which used the Ushahidi platform.

Read Abstract and Key Highlights.