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3 Ways the Underwear Bomber Changed Counterterrorism

December 25, 2009 was a pivotal day for U.S. counterterrorism. Although the airline bombing failed, the reverberations from the attempt are still being felt. Here’s how this incident changed U.S. counterterrorism policy, as told by Mike Leiter, the director of the National Counterterrorism Center.

Popular Mechanics By Joe Pappalardo September 16, 2010 2:30 PM

1) The incident saved the Counterterrorism Center's budget.

2) New teams were formed to chase leads, not write reports.

3) The failed attack focused the Obama administration on counterterrorism.

Phi Beta Iota: Click on the photo for the full story at Popular Mechanics. Above we just list the three “ways,” each of them a perfect outcome for a fraudulent staged “threat” that was almost certainly concocted with Israeli help. Until the guy video-taping the whole thing from in front is produced, our professional judgment is that the Underpants Bomber was an agent of the US Government doing precisely what this worthless activity wanted: give it a reason, however absurd, to keep on being worthless. [Covert Operations against a US audience are illegal, but who cares about the Constitution or laws, these days?] NCTC's leader, a decent well-intentioned politically-appointed lawyer who knows nothing relevant, is the poster child for what is wrong with the entire US national security domain.

Journal: National Counterterrorism Center (NCTC) Goes from Dumb to Dumber

Journal: The Plot Thickens–Who Benefits?

Journal: Who Over-Rode State to Allow Xmas Bomber?

Journal: Who, Exactly, is Behind Burning Koran?

Journal: Director of National Intelligence Alleges….

Journal: CIA Leads the “Walking Dead” in USA

Journal: CIA’s Poor Tradecraft AND Poor Management

Review: Willful Neglect–The Dangerous Illusion of Homeland Security

2010/10/012010/10/01

Journal: Henry Seigman on Israel’s Freeze Scam

07 Other Atrocities, 08 Wild Cards, 10 Security, 11 Society, Government, Peace Intelligence

editor spinney time — Chuck Spinney Recommends

Netanyahu's Freeze Scam

by Henry Siegman 30 Sep 2010

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's remarks at the formal White House launching of the resumed Middle East peace talks on September 2 were the clearest indication yet of his lack of seriousness. But neither the host, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, nor any of the distinguished guests seemed aware of it. Indeed, they applauded his remarks. What they applauded was Netanyahu's dramatic declaration, as he faced Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, that the success of the resumed negotiations will depend on his own and Abbas' readiness to make “painful concessions” for the sake of peace.

If these words have any significance, they must mean that Netanyahu is prepared to make Israeli concessions that match Palestinian concessions: i.e., if Palestinians concede to Israel part of their territory east of the 1967 border, Israel would concede to the Palestinians comparable territory on its side of that border.

But everyone present at this festive White House event knew this to be completely untrue. Netanyahu has never offered to concede even one inch of Israeli territory to the Palestinians — not even from Palestinian territories Israel acquired in 1948 during its War of Independence, which the 1947 UN Partition Plan had assigned to Palestine's Arab population. In fact, no one has ever asked Israel to make any concession to the Palestinians — whether territory, water resources, Jerusalem or sovereignty. In respect to these and the other permanent-status issues, the concessions have all been demanded of the Palestinians. None were asked of Israel. So Netanyahu's offer of parallel Israeli concessions is a lie. Unless, of course, Netanyahu meant to apply the term “painful concessions” to his willingness to return to Palestinians a part of their own territory, all of which — up to the 1967 border — is universally recognized as being under Israeli occupation, and therefore subject to the Fourth Geneva Convention's strictures that absolutely forbid the transfer of the occupying power's population to those territories. If that is what he meant, what Netanyahu was telling Abbas is that Israel expects to be rewarded for returning some of the territory it unlawfully confiscated from the Palestinians by having Palestinians concede their right to the balance of that territory.

By getting the distinguished guests at this event to applaud this offer, Netanyahu can fairly be said to have done for international peace diplomacy what Bernard Madoff did for financial markets.

Read full article online…

Phi Beta Iota: Mr. Siegman is the Ambassador to Israel designate in the Huffington Post Virtual Cabinet. Here he presents FACTS that neither the White House nor the Department of State nor the US Intelligence Community appear capable of acknowledging. The US is an enabler of the atrocities perpetuated by Israel against the Palestinians.

2010/10/012010/10/01

Journal: Kow-Towing to Israel for No Good Reason

07 Other Atrocities, 08 Wild Cards, 10 Security, Government, Officers Call, Peace Intelligence

Sacrificing Substance for Process

Peace Process to Nowhere

By FRANKLIN C. SPINNEY, Counterpunch

The Israeli newspaper Yediot Ahronot reports that President Obama begged Prime Minister Netanyahu to extend his settlement freeze in order to save the so-called peace talks.

As a quid pro quo, Obama is reported to have promised Netanyahu that (1) Israel could resume settlement construction if the peace negotiations failed to produce results and (2) that the United States would give Israel written assurances of its commitment to Israel’s security (suggesting a formal peace treaty perhaps?). Despite Obama’s desperation, Netanyahu blew Obama off and allowed the so-called freeze to expire.

If, as is likely, this report is true, Israel has humiliated the United States once again — a fact that will no doubt be deemed irrelevant by Israel’s shills on both sides of the aisle in Congress, not to mention the mainstream media.

The last president to stand up to Israel was Dwight Eisenhower, when he pulled the plug on the second Arab-Israeli war in 1956 and forced Israel to retreat from the east bank of the Suez Canal and to give up its conquest of the Sinai.

But eleven years later, Israel learned US condemnation was no longer a problem.

In fact, Israel learned it could get away with murder and could treat the United States with utter contempt when (1) its air and naval forces not only attacked the USS Liberty — a high priority US Navy signals intelligence ship — on 8 June 1967 during the Six-Day War, killing 34 and wounding 171 US sailors, but (2) was able to secure a cover up of its perfidy by the highest levels of the US government, including President Johnson, Secretary of Defense McNamara, and most of the senior military officers in the Pentagon, despite the misgivings of Dean Rusk, the Secretary of State and Admiral Thomas Moorer, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff (neither of whom chose to resign in protest, however).

Read rest of article…

Phi Beta Iota: As has been reported on more than one occasion, even when Israel “promises” to stop settlements, they continue apace. The Israeli government cannot be trusted on any detail.

2010/09/302010/09/30

Journal: Israelis Executed US Citizen & Five Others

07 Other Atrocities, 08 Wild Cards, Government, Military, Officers Call

UN Fact-Finding Mission: Israeli Killing Of US Citizen Was “Execution”

Originally published in Truth-out

By Gareth Porter

The report of the fact-finding mission of the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) on the Israeli attack on the Gaza flotilla released last week shows conclusively, for the first time, that US citizen Furkan Dogan and five Turkish citizens were murdered execution-style by Israeli commandos.

2010/09/30

Journal: Children in Poverty in USA–More…And MORE

01 Poverty, Civil Society, Gift Intelligence, Government

A Drumbeat That Must Be Heard

Mark Shriver , 2010.09.29

According to the Census Bureau's new report, 46 states and the District of Columbia experienced increased childhood poverty rates over the last year, with an alarming national rate of 1 in 5 kids affected.

Read Post

Phi Beta Iota: While the Bush and Obama Administrations bailed out Wall Street and enabled the continuation of $10 million dollar bonuses using taxpayer funds, poverty in America sky-rocketed–poverty of adults, and poverty of chidlren. This is a crime against humanity that goes unnoticed because no one is doing the job that the media is supposed to be doing: rendering the public service of public intelligence in the public interest.

2010/09/30

Journal: Finally, A Break in Foreclosures

03 Economy, Commerce, Commercial Intelligence, Government

JPMorgan Suspends Certain Foreclosures As Doubts Grow Over Legality

Even as August saw more Americans lose their homes to foreclosure than in any other month on record, there are growing concerns over the legality of many of those proceedings.

JPMorgan Chase has suspended legal proceedings on 50,000 foreclosures, due to concerns about the validity of the foreclosure documents, a spokesman for the bank told CNBC Wednesday (hat tip to Zero Hedge).

JPMorgan spokesman Tom Kelly confirmed to the AP Wednesday that “employees signed some affidavits about loan documents without personally verifying the files.”

The decision is the latest signal of a potentially massive stall in the nation's foreclosure process. Last week, after GMAC Mortgage halted its foreclosures in 23 states, the Washington Post reported that one of GMAC's employees hadn't read the roughly 10,000 foreclosure documents he approved each month (and now Colorado wants to be added to that list of states). It then turned out that the “robo signer” might not have been alone.

Phi Beta Iota: We called for a freeze on all foreclosures and evictions back in October 2008, instead of bailing out Wall Street where one $10 million bonus could cover an astonishing number of mortgage payments among the poor and lower middle class. The US Government failed to assure justice for all those who have been evicted to date. This move by JP Morgan is a good one, and also reminds us once again how important INTEGRITY is at every stage of every process. The reality is that most final “holders” of aggregated mortgages never had the actual loan note to begin with. The Department of Justice should have known that and should have advised all relevant policymakers and politicians of this fact, but in the rush to bail out Wall Street, the public interest was ignored, demeaned, and betrayed.

2010/09/302010/09/30

Journal: Chuck Spinney on Deadly Games of Deceit

09 Justice, 10 Security, 11 Society, Corruption, Cultural Intelligence, Government, Intelligence (government), Methods & Process, Military, Officers Call, Power Behind-the-Scenes/Special Interests, Secrecy & Politics of Secrecy

The linked article by William Pfaff illustrates how the Pentagon set up Mr. Obama to do its bidding.

Are Obama’s Hands Tied?

28 September 2010

By William Pfaff

A splendid and courageous new book, Washington Rules: America’s Path to Permanent War, by Andrew J. Bacevich of Boston University (and for many years previously, the U.S. Army), describes with lucidity the degree to which the power of the American presidency over war and peace has been weakened in our day, and, in important respects, superseded.

One might call this a silent coup against the presidency, but a coup implies intention: a responsible actor who sets the coup d’etat into action for a defined purpose. The argument Bacevich makes implies that a coup can be institutional or intellectual, and come from outside as well as inside government. Its characteristic is to create a situation in which a president is no longer free to act as he might wish, because all of the doors except one have been closed.

Read Rest of Original Article

Chuck Spinney's Original Comments Continued

The name of the bureaucratic game, of course, is to remove all realistic alternatives to the Pentagon's preferred decision before that decision is made. Pfaff's discussion is based on Andrew Bacevich's new book “Washington Rules.” I have not read Bacevich's book yet, and will not be able to until I return to the states in November, but I have read several reviews and from that perspective can say that the behaviour Pfaff describes comports well with behavior I witnessed in my years in the Pentagon.

The picture is more subtle and far more complicated than that portrayed by Pfaff, however.

Continue reading “Journal: Chuck Spinney on Deadly Games of Deceit”

Category: Government

Journal: Underpants Bomber Saved Worthless NCTC