Government – Page 510 – Public Intelligence Blog

The Afghan adventure is ending in a disaster. The outsiders are again leaving with their tails between their legs. This will be the fourth time for the Brits. For the U.S. Afghanistan is just another disaster in what what is becoming a dreary pattern of military failures at ever higher costs. Predictably, President Obama's surge in 2010 failed to stem the downward spiral, largely because its central premise: namely the plan to rapidly build up competent professional Afghan security forces was a logically flawed. Now, according to recent polls, a larger percentage of Americans oppose the war than was the case in VietNam. Yet in contrast to Vietnam, the American people are not angry — they seem to be disinterested, tired, and want to move on; one thing is clear, however, they show no sign of energizing a political desire to hold the military accountable for the Afghan or Iraq disasters.

Today, Versailles on the Potomac is far more lathered up by former defense secretary Robert Gates attempt to protect the Bush clan and to distract attention away from the Pentagon's culpability by fingering Obama for the Afghan failure. To be sure Obama deserves a great deal of blame for the debacle, particularly the consequences of his bungled decision to escalate what he said was the “good war.” Moreover, Obama can not say he was not warned about the dangers of escalating well before the fact. On the other hand, as Patrick Cockburn explains below, the roots of the Afghan mess go back to the failure to defeat the Taliban in 2002 and the toxic mix of corruption and warlordism in the regime we imposed on the Afghan people — and those are problems Obama inherited. In short, there is plenty of blame to go around, not to mention the warmongers in Congress, like John McCain and his infantile sidekick Lindsey Graham.

Cockburn' essay gives the reader an idea of the dire state of affairs in Arghanistan. He summarizes a devastating 30 December 2013 report written by Thomas Ruttig of the esteemed Afghan Analysts Network, also attached in PDF format [below the line after the article] for your convenience. I urge you to read Ruttig's report.

Chuck Spinney

JANUARY 13, 2014

Countless Dead, Poverty, Corruption – and the Taliban Rising

What We Did to Afghanistan

by PATRICK COCKBURN, Counterpunch

Continue reading “Chuck Spinney: Afghan Disaster…Rooted in Western Ignorance and Western Lies”

2014/01/15

Owl: Welfare for the Rich & Corporations

Commerce, Corruption, Government

For those who have right-wing extremist friends who complains about welfare for the poor, especially for the dark-skinned ones, share this article with them. Here's the first three:

“There are actually thousands of tax breaks and subsidies for the rich and corporations provided by federal, state and local governments but these ten will give a taste.

One. State and Local Subsidies to Corporations. An excellent New York Times study by Louise Story calculated that state and local government provide at least $80 billion in subsidies to corporations. Over 48 big corporations received over $100 million each. GM was the biggest at a total of $1.7 billion extracted from 16 different states but Shell, Ford and Chrysler all received over a billion dollars each. Amazon, Microsoft, Prudential, Boeing and casino companies in Colorado and New Jersey received well over $200 million each.

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2014/01/132014/01/15

Steven Levy: 2 Hours with NSA Chiefs — They Are a) Suffering Cognitive Dissonance and b) Seriously Pissed-Off

Cultural Intelligence, Government, Military

I Spent Two Hours Talking With the NSA’s Bigwigs. Here’s What Has Them Mad

By Steven Levy

WIRED, 01.13.14

EXTRACT:

I talk about that session in my story, but let me note a few general takeaways:

The dual mission of the NSA generates cognitive dissonance. Right on its home page, the NSA says its core missions are “to protect U.S. national security systems and to produce foreign signals intelligence information.” The officials repeatedly claimed they pursue both responsibilities with equal vigor. There’s a built-in conflict here: If U.S. industries distribute strong encryption throughout the world, it should make the NSA’s signals-gathering job much harder. Yet the NSA says it welcomes encryption. (The officials even implied that the tension between the two missions winds up making both efforts more robust.) Nonetheless, the Snowden leaks indicate that the NSA has engaged in numerous efforts that tamper with the security of American products. The officials resisted this characterization. Why, they asked, would they compromise security of products they use themselves, like Windows, Cisco routers, or the encryption standards they allegedly compromised?

Continue reading “Steven Levy: 2 Hours with NSA Chiefs — They Are a) Suffering Cognitive Dissonance and b) Seriously Pissed-Off”

2014/01/132014/01/13

Tom Atlee: TPP & Fast Track Toxic to Democracy — Call for Action

Commerce, Corruption, Earth Intelligence, Government

Act now re TPP and Fast Track (toxic to democracy)

This month the US Congress could pass legislation that would make sure that complex trade agreements favored by multinational corporations – like the TransPacific Partnership (TPP) – would be pushed through Congress with little debate and little information provided to the public. This so-called “fast-track” authority – and the trade agreements it is designed to facilitate – would seriously undermine what remains of US democracy. We invite you to act on this matter soon as your conscience dictates.

Dear friends,

In my blog post The rapid growth of serious responses to climate disruption I mentioned the movement to protest the secretly negotiated Trans-Pacific Partnership agreement (TPP) that could have profound impacts on democracy, on public health and welfare, and on the fate of the planet.

This issue has now become urgent.

Continue reading “Tom Atlee: TPP & Fast Track Toxic to Democracy — Call for Action”

2014/01/132014/01/13

Rob Dover: Putting the Steele into intelligence reform

#OSE Open Source Everything, Cultural Intelligence, Government, IO Sense-Making, Peace Intelligence

Putting the Steele into intelligence reform

Robert Steele is one of the more interesting writers on intelligence. Based in the US, and a former practitioner he has brought an enormous amount of energy to the questions around intelligence effectiveness and intelligence reform, and can rightly be thought of as a grandfather of the open source intelligence movement, and more recently the expanded “Open Source Everything” meme. I should insert the health warning that he has appeared in the Companion guide that Mike Goodman, Claudia Hillebrand and I edited, so I am not entirely impartial on this, but I would place myself as a ‘critical friend’ of his work.[i]

He has recently published a semi-manifesto piece about US intelligence and it can be found on this link. I have distilled the following key points from it, that I want to write around briefly here, but the original piece is where his take on these issues sit, obviously: 1) intelligence should be about decision support; 2) intelligence is currently being justified along the lines of the quantity of secrets it produces the Executive without regard to the total government need; 3) there is a dominant discourse that only secret intelligence agencies are equipped to ‘do’ intelligence; 4) Parliament and politicians in general desperately need intelligence qua decision-support, sense-making applied to all information secret and open that applies to their functional domains; and 5) the public desperately needs intelligence, again in the form of decision support. Recently the public has become the object – Americans would say the target – of intelligence agencies, which is quite the opposite of the public being a virtual intelligence network in being, contributing to national and public security more effectively by leveraging the creative commons approach to information, what some call collective or co-intelligence.[ii]

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2014/01/12

4th Media: Latin America and the US: The Apotheosis of Distrust

Corruption, Government, Military, Peace Intelligence

Latin America and the US: The Apotheosis of Distrust

The year 2013 was shockingly damaging to relations between the U.S. and the countries of Latin America. Edward Snowden’s revelations showed that in the Western Hemisphere, Washington is trying to play only by the rules it itself has written.

Using such spying programs as Prism, Boundless Informant and others, U.S. intelligence was collecting strategically useful information throughout the South American continent and using it to ensure the effectiveness of its policy in the region…

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2014/01/11

Marcus Aurelius: CIA Retirement Departure Study

Government

Following from a former Agency officer who blogs on the Internet. For your convenience, in addition to the article, I include in PDF format the IG report on which the press report is based.

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[EXTRACT[

5.) Management: Clearly management has been a problem and will continue to be one of the biggest problems the CIA will face for years to come. The CIA hemorrhages quality talent because management doesn’t know how to adequately manage, support and incentive employees. Los Angeles Times Ken Dilanian’s story explains these issues better than I can.

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