Government – Page 794 – Public Intelligence Blog

2011/08/212011/08/21

Chuck Spinney: Dysfunctional West Sharply Unstable

07 Other Atrocities, Blog Wisdom, Budgets & Funding, Civil Society, Corruption, Counter-Oppression/Counter-Dictatorship Practices, Cultural Intelligence, Government, IO Deeds of War, IO Impotency, Misinformation & Propaganda, Money, Banks & Concentrated Wealth, Power Behind-the-Scenes/Special Interests

Item 1 is an insightful essay by Patrick Seale outlining the common characteristics of the political instabilities and revolutionary pressures now sweeping Europe and the Middle East. Although Seale uses the term Global Intifada to describe these instabilities, the term Intifada evolved out of the Palestinian struggle against occupation. He suggests the instabilities may be following a more general dynamic. The common causal factors he describes in the second paragraph also bring to mind a very loose comparison of the unrest unleashed in 2011 to the explosion of revolutions in 1848 across Europe. That many of Seale's common factors also exist in varying degrees in the United States makes one wonder why the politics of rage in the US remain confined to the right side of political spectrum. Item 2, “The World Consequences of US Decline,” is an equally insightful essay by Immanuel Wallerstein that suggests obliquely that this may be a temporary condition.

Chuck Spinney
Nice, France

Continue reading “Chuck Spinney: Dysfunctional West Sharply Unstable”

2011/08/21

John Robb: Failure of Government in One Anecdote

01 Brazil, 01 Poverty, 04 Education, 10 Security, 11 Society, Blog Wisdom, Civil Society, Cultural Intelligence, Government, IO Deeds of Peace, IO Impotency, Methods & Process, Military

Status check on Brazil's specialized police units trying to supplant illicit drug governance in the favelas. Per an upcoming law, these units will be in place for 25 years. “Many communities previously relied on the drug gangs for services from water to wireless internet, and critics have pointed out that the state has been slow to replace them.”

Phi Beta Iota: The program has been successful in applying ruthless pervasive special violence to displace the drug gangs and insert permanent police presence. The program has FAILED in two respects: it has not been accompanied by the rapid provision of normal services from water to wireless; and it has not provided for the education of the people, something that requires call centers and free cell access to the Internet (they don't have the time to sit in a classroom for N years).

In their own words:

“People in the favela don't believe in themselves. What is really needed in the long term is more education.”

2011/08/202011/08/20

Reference: US Secret Intelligence, US Banks, Illicit Gold, Murder of the Global Economy, RECAP

04 Inter-State Conflict, 07 Other Atrocities, 10 Security, 10 Transnational Crime, 11 Society, Budgets & Funding, Commerce, Commercial Intelligence, Corruption, Counter-Oppression/Counter-Dictatorship Practices, Cultural Intelligence, Director of National Intelligence et al (IC), Government, History, Intelligence (government), IO Deeds of War, Military, Misinformation & Propaganda, Money, Banks & Concentrated Wealth, Officers Call, Power Behind-the-Scenes/Special Interests, Secrecy & Politics of Secrecy

The memorandum “Collateral Damage: U.S. Covert Operations and the Terrorist Attacks on September 11, 2001” has been circulating for years on the Internet, studiously ignored by most. It was previously posted as a journal item on this website. Since then, the public has learned a great deal more about both gold and greed, and the memorandum is once again circulating.

This is by no means the complete story, and there are some leaps of imagination and speculation that must be deeply investigated or discounted. Central to appreciating the magnitude of the government cover-up is the FACT that MONTHS before 9/11 Dick Cheney set in motion the national counter-terrorism exercise that gave him complete control on “the day” of 9/11.

What is clear is that there is a great deal more investigation to be done, and that a truth and reconciliation commission should be created in time to put Dick Cheney and the others on the stand before they either die a natural death or are assassinated by foreign governments righteously angry over what has been done to them by American children playing with fire.

Here are a few extracts that today have a greater likelihood of being appreciated for their substance.

Continue reading “Reference: US Secret Intelligence, US Banks, Illicit Gold, Murder of the Global Economy, RECAP”

2011/08/19

Winslow Wheeler: Leon Panetta Misleads Public

10 Security, 11 Society, Civil Society, Corruption, DoD, Government, IO Deeds of War, Military, Officers Call, Peace Intelligence

WinslowWheeler Cropped — Winslow Wheeler

Secretary of Defense Panetta used an invitation to the National War College as an opportunity to lobby against cutting the defense budget more than the $350 billion he has already agreed to. In the absence of any informed or probing questions, Panetta's extreme rhetoric has also oozed into new Washington DC hysteria resulting from reports about a new round of Pentagon budget cuts. Even the most severe version of the cuts being bandied about would leave DOD quite flush with money in historic terms.

These are the themes in a new piece, “Elitist Tripe on Defense Spending,” at AOL Defense.

The invitation came to me from Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta's public affairs office to attend a “conversation” with Panetta and Secretary of State Hilary Clinton at the prestigious National Defense University in Washington. Although I knew it wasn't me they wanted to talk to, I sat in the audience to hear Panetta and Clinton in action, especially on the subject of my prime interest: the defense budget.

Continue reading “Winslow Wheeler: Leon Panetta Misleads Public”

2011/08/192011/08/19

Chuck Spinney: Fukushima Aftermath

03 Economy, 05 Energy, 08 Proliferation, 08 Wild Cards, 11 Society, Corruption, Earth Intelligence, Government, IO Impotency

A sobering Japanese bookend to the stunning Sprey-Cockburn report which documented Fukushima's increased infant death rates in some cities in the United States (distributed on 16 Aug). Yet another nail in the claim that we can evolve a safe carbon-free economy in the near term. Given the low power density of green technologies, like wind and solar, going carbon-free or moving away from fire — i.e., the invention that launched millions of years human cultural evolution — in the next 30-100 years necessarily involves a huge expansion in nuclear power, because is the only high power-density, non-carbon solution available over the foreseeable future).

Chuck Spinney
The Blaster
Nice

Published on Thursday, August 18, 2011 by Al Jazeera

Fukushima Radiation Alarms Doctors

Japanese doctors warn of public health problems caused by Fukushima radiation.

by Dahr Jamail

Scientists and doctors are calling for a new national policy in Japan that mandates the testing of food, soil, water, and the air for radioactivity still being emitted from Fukushima's heavily damaged Daiichi nuclear power plant.

“How much radioactive materials have been released from the plant?” asked Dr Tatsuhiko Kodama, a professor at the Research Centre for Advanced Science and Technology and Director of the University of Tokyo's Radioisotope Centre, in a July 27 speech to the Committee of Health, Labour and Welfare at Japan's House of Representatives.

Chuck Spinney: NATO and Libya – What Next?

04 Inter-State Conflict, 05 Civil War, 07 Other Atrocities, 08 Wild Cards, 10 Security, Corruption, Counter-Oppression/Counter-Dictatorship Practices, Cultural Intelligence, Government, IO Deeds of War, Military, Peace Intelligence

The interplay of chance with necessity means that no one can predict the future evolutionary pathway in Libya or the US role in Libya, but Ted Galen Carpenter of the libertarian CATO Inst. provides a thoughtful lens for thinking about potential ramifications of NATO's precipitate intervention in Libya.

Key issues discussed:

De facto or de jure partition vs a unification that sows the seeds of future conflict?
How to replenish empty Libyan treasury and repair infrastructure (including restoring oil production capability)?
Will US get sucked into another NATO stabilization, peacekeeping, nation-building mission?

NATO’s New Problem: Post-Qaddafi Libya?

Ted Galen Carpenter, The National Interest, August 18, 2011

After weeks of very little movement either militarily or diplomatically in Libya, there are apparent developments on both fronts in recent days. Rebel forces, aided by NATO’s air support, finally appear to be advancing into western Libya and cutting off supply lines to Tripoli, the long-time stronghold of support for Muammar Qaddafi. And reports are swirling about secret negotiations that might provide a peaceful exit from the country for the aging dictator.

Those developments underscore that U.S. and NATO officials urgently need to consider what strategy they intend to pursue if Qaddafi’s more-than-four-decade hold on power finally comes to an end. That is more crucial for the leaders of the European members of the alliance, since Libya is located on Europe’s Mediterranean flank, but because the Obama administration unwisely chose to involve the United States in Libya’s internecine conflict by launching air strikes, it has become a pertinent issue for Washington as well.

The outlook for a post-Qaddafi Libya is midpoint between sobering and depressing. It is possible that the warring parties will accept a de facto division of the country between the eastern and western tribes, although a formal agreement to that effect is unlikely. Even an informal partition would more accurately reflect the demographics, politics, and history of that territory than an insistence on keeping Libya intact.

Chuck Spinney: US versus Iran on Uranium-Lack of Integrity

05 Iran, 08 Proliferation, 10 Security, 11 Society, Corruption, Cultural Intelligence, Government, IO Deeds of War, IO Impotency, Peace Intelligence

Spinning Iran's centrifuges

By Yousaf Butt, Asia Times, Aug 16, 2011

Yousaf Butt is a nuclear physicist and is currently serving as a scientific consultant to the Federation of American Scientists on global security issues. Previously, he was a fellow on the Committee on International Security and Arms Control at the US National Academy of Sciences, and on the Global Security Program at the Union of Concerned Scientists.

Consider yourself warned – “[I]n the next few years Iran will be in position to detonate a nuclear device,” so writes Ray Takeyh, confidently, in a recent Washington Post OpEd [1]. Why? Because the Iranian government willingly informed the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) that it would begin installing additional centrifuges with higher capacity to enrich uranium. [2]

Just like fertilizer can be used to increase crop yields – or make bombs – uranium is a dual use material.

Read full article.