Category: Government

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DefDog: The Gathering Storm – CIA Asks for More Drones, Most Clueless About Tribes, and Rest of World Routing Around the State

Corruption, Government, Media, Military
DefDog

These three hang together.

CIA claims it needs more drones

The CIA has asked the White House to increase the number of drones it employs to transform it into a paramilitary force, despite recent statistics that show the majority of drone deaths are civilians.

CIA Director David Petraeus submitted a proposal that could add as many as 10 drones to a program that currently ranges between 30 to 35 of the unmanned aerial vehicles. The increase would allow the agency to continue launching lethal strikes in Pakistan and Yemen, as well as target developing terror threats in other regions of the world, according to a report first acquired by the Washington Post.

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Tribes and Terrorism: Myth and Reality

Tribal areas in the Middle East are not administrated by powerful gangs, bandits, or warlords, but by representative local leadership. The authority and power of local sheikhs in Arab tribes are dependent on the consent, respect, and support of their constituents. Tribal leaders are sacked and replaced if they lose the respect of their tribesmen. Unlike the highly centralized and hierarchical Turkic and Central Asian models of tribalism, Arab tribes tend to be relatively egalitarian social organizations. Although political manipulation by the colonial and post-colonial regimes created disparities in wealth and power within and between tribes in the region, tribal sheikhs continue to perceive one another as equals endowed with certain social and material privileges. Unlike hard to reach government officials, a sheikh’s door is open to all.

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Pirate Bay and Mega: Treating the State as Damage and Routing Around It

One advantage of network culture is that self-organized networks are much smarter than authoritarian hierarchies. Horizontal networks circumvent censorship faster than vertically organized institutions can impose it.

Last year, as the U.S. House and Senate considered (respectively) SOPA and PIPA legislation that would authorize the federal government to shut down websites — entirely by administrative fiat and without judicial due process — for alleged copyright infringement, the Web quickly responded with countermeasures that preemptively rendered such laws ineffectual.

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Mini-Me: Navy Dependant Put on No-Fly List for Critical Views – Stranded for Five Days in Hawaii – No One In TSA Able to Think or Over-Ride?

Corruption, Government, Idiocy, Ineptitude
Who? Mini-Me?

Man stranded after finding himself on no-fly list during stopover in Hawaii

JOINT BASE PEARL HARBOR-HICKAM, Hawaii –  Hawaii is a paradise for most visitors. But it was Wade Hicks, Jr.'s prison for five days.

The 34-year-old from Gulfport, Miss., was stranded in the islands this week after being told he was on the FBI's no-fly list during a layover for a military flight from California to Japan.

The episode left Hicks scrambling to figure out how he'd get home from Hawaii without being able to fly until he was abruptly removed from the list on Thursday with no explanation. It also raised questions beyond how he landed on the list: How could someone on a list intelligence officials use to inform counterterrorism investigations successfully fly standby on an Air Force flight?

Hicks said he was traveling to visit his wife, a U.S. Navy lieutenant who's deployed in Japan. He hitched a ride on the military flight as is common for military dependents, who are allowed to fly on scheduled routes when there's room.

Hicks said that during his layover at Joint Base Pearl Harbor-Hickam, a U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agent told him he was on the no-fly list and wouldn't be allowed on a plane.

“I said, ‘How am I supposed to get off this island and go see my wife or go home?' And her explanation was: ‘I don't know,'” Hicks said.

Hicks said he was shocked and thought they must have had the wrong person because he doesn't have a criminal record and recently passed an extensive background check in Mississippi to get a permit to carry a concealed weapon.

But the agent said his name, Social Security number and date of birth matched the person prohibited from flying, Hicks said. He wasn't told why and wonders whether his controversial views on the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks played a role. Hicks said he disagrees with the 9/11 Commission's conclusions about the attacks.

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Chuck Spinney – Cogent Analysis pf Arab Spring Seven Key Challenges Not Available from CIA or Department of State – Plus Personal Appeal for Contributions to Keep CounterPunch Going

05 Iran, 08 Wild Cards, Civil Society, Cultural Intelligence, Ethics, Government, IO Deeds of Peace, Knowledge, Military, Peace Intelligence
Chuck Spinney

Jeffrey St Claire, the editor at Counterpunch has given me permission to distribute the attached essay, “The Arab Spring at the Crossroads,” by  Esam Al-Amin.  It was published in the subscription edition of Counterpunch and is not available at the CP website.  Al-Amin, who I do not know, has written a very informative summary of the crosscurrents now shaping the Arab world.  This is a subject of very great importance to the welfare of all Americans.  I urge you to read it carefully.

In addition to being informative, Al-Amin's essay is a prime example of the quality of the information now available in what the mainstream media likes to call the alternative press.  This brings me to my second reason for writing this blaster.  Counterpunch is having a rare fundraising drive and I am taking what for me is an unprecedented action of urging you to contribute.  I think it is important to support alternative news/opinion outlets like Antiwar.com, Truthout, Alternet, and especially, since I am biased, Counterpunch. (Truth in advertising: I counted the late editor Alex Cockburn and still count his co-editor Jeffrey St Claire as friends.)

So, I urge you read the essay below — you can determine whether or not you think it stands on its own merits.  If you feel this is the kind of info worth paying a little for, I encourage you to think about purchasing a subscription or a gift sub for a friend or relative or sending a small tax-deductible donation to  CP's secure sever.  The Counterpunchers promise they won’t contact you to shake you down for more money or sell your name to any lists–not Karl Rove’s and especially not MoveOn’s. To contribute by phone you can call Becky or Deva toll free at: 1-800-840-3683

Chuck Spinney

Please Contribute to CounterPunch.  Printable Document:  Esam Al-Amin on Arab Spring Seven Challenges (9 Page Doc)

The Arab Spring at the Crossroads

Seven Key Challenges

By Esam Al-Amin

CounterPunch Volume 19 Number 17, >October 1-15, 2012, published October 2, 2012

Ever since Napoléon Bonaparte invaded Egypt in 1798, the relationship between the West and the Arab-Muslim East has been contentious and convoluted. Although this military leader of the first French Republic conquered Egypt for strategic reasons in his rivalry with the British and the Ottomans, the Muslim Arabs of the region – later dubbed “the Middle East” by an American naval officer – felt vulnerable, exposed, and weak.

Continue reading “Chuck Spinney – Cogent Analysis pf Arab Spring Seven Key Challenges Not Available from CIA or Department of State – Plus Personal Appeal for Contributions to Keep CounterPunch Going”

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NIGHTWATCH: Switzerland Prepares for Refugees & Civil Unrest

01 Poverty, 05 Civil War, 07 Other Atrocities, 10 Transnational Crime, Civil Society, Corruption, Government, Ineptitude, Law Enforcement, Military, Policies

Switzerland: In September, Swiss authorities launched a military exercise to test its preparedness to deal with internal civil unrest as well as refugees from the Eurozone crisis, according to international media.

Comment: The Swiss are not prone to overreact to threats. They do not spend defense funds in order to be prepared for potential threats. They prepare for real threats.

The exercise is significant because it means the Swiss have determined that internal civil unrest coupled with refugees from Eurozone countries represent real threats for which their security forces must be prepared. The Swiss understand the meaning and significance of early warning and know about indicators.

NIGHTWATCH KGS Home

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Paul Craig Robert: America (RIP) – The True Cost of Government Corruption and Banking Greed – Moral Bankruptcy Assures the Death of a Nation

Commerce, Corruption, Government
Matt Taibbi

Review: Griftopia–Bubble Machines, Vampire Squids, and the Long Con That Is Breaking America

QUOTE (32): What has taken place over the last generation is a highly complicated merger of crime and policy, of stealing and government. Far from taking care of the rest of us, the financial leaders of America and their political servants have seemingly reached the cynical conclusion that our society is not work saving and have taken on a new mission that involved not creating wealth for us all, but simply absconding with whatever wealth remains in our hollowed out economy. They don’t feed us, we feed them.

Paul Craig Roberts

America R.I.P.

Paul Craig Roberts

Institute for Political Economy, October 16, 2012

Paul Craig Roberts was Assistant Secretary of the Treasury for Economic Policy and associate editor of the Wall Street Journal. He was columnist for Business Week, Scripps Howard News Service, and Creators Syndicate. He has had many university appointments. His internet columns have attracted a worldwide following.

EXTRACT:

In the early years of the 21st century, the Federal Reserve substituted a rise in consumer debt to drive the economy in place of the missing rise in consumer incomes. Low interest rates drove up housing prices, and people refinanced their mortgages and spent the equity. The Federal Reserve kept the economy alive by loading up consumers with debt that housing prices and consumer incomes would soon be unable to support.

Continue reading “Paul Craig Robert: America (RIP) – The True Cost of Government Corruption and Banking Greed – Moral Bankruptcy Assures the Death of a Nation”

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SmartPlanet: Corrupt Government Allows Corporate Socialism – Privatized Profits and Externalized Losses

Commerce, Corruption, Government, Media

How corporations are crippling U.S. prosperity

By | October 15, 2012

David Cay Johnston
Click for Biography

A dearth of competition in major U.S. industries and a government that’s policy making has been severely corrupted by moneyed interests has led to depressed wages and stifled innovation, a Pulitzer Prize winning journalist says in a new book.

In essence, you’re being ripped off, and those responsible are taking everyone’s money while assuming very little risk.

David Cay Johnston was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for reporting the inequalities and loopholes that exist in the U.S. tax code and exposing corporate tax evasion. His latest work, The Fine Print: How Big companies Use “Plain English” to Rob You Blind, examines his findings about how the U.S. economy has strayed away from capitalism and into “corporate socialism,” where the free market, its engine of prosperity, has stalled.

Some argue that globalization has caused a smoothing of salaries as developing economies grow. We asked Johnston to make his case about how the alleged subversion of competitive markets could actually be what’s responsible. Here’s our interview with David Cay Johnston:

SmartPlanet: Are our markets competitive or is the game fixed?

David Cay Johnston: A growing number of industries are monopolies, duopolies and oligopolies even as they claim to be in highly competitive markets. Cable, Internet and telephone provide a good example of this. In most places you have one phone company and one cable company offering similarly slow, by world standards, Internet speeds and very similar prices. Computers make it possible for companies to match prices quickly, as airlines do in just a few minutes for millions of fares when one airline changes its pricing structure.

SP: Are we paying too much for goods and services?

DCJ: We pay four times what the French do for a triple play package of cable, Internet and telephone — and they get worldwide TV, not just domestic; their Internet is ten times faster and instead of two country calling, they get long-distance to 70 countries at no extra charge. All that for $38 compared to the U.S. average of $160 including taxes. By one measure we pay 38 times as much as the Japanese per bit of information on the Internet. In states where the electric utilities were broken up so power generation could be a competitive business prices did not fall. Instead since 1999 they rose 48% more than inflation, compared to just 8 percent in states that retained traditional regulation. Everywhere there is a lack of competition, or only the appearance of competition, we pay way too much.

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