True Cost: Cost of food-borne illnesses is deemed much higher than earlier estimates

01 Agriculture, 07 Health, 12 Water, Commerce, Cultural Intelligence, Earth Intelligence, Ethics, Government
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Among the food scares in recent years was a deadly E. coli outbreak tied to spinach. In most cases, it's unknown how or why people get ill from what they eat. (Justin Sullivan / Getty Images / September 15, 2006)

Phi Beta Iota: The second sentence is ignorant.  It is well-known that between industrial farming with zero regard for either the spill-over of animal shit into fields growing fruits and vegatables, combined with an exotic array of antibiotics for the animals (living in ghetto conditions) and pesticides for the plants, most of which have NOT been tested and are NOT regulated because of multiple legal loopholes, most of what we eat is mostly comprised of oil and corn and neither safe nor nutritious.  Corporate irresponsibility survives because government complacency has been purchased.  This is a superb example of “true cost” economics that will hit the marketplace like a tsunami in the next five years.  When man-made illnesses are combined with over-kill on man-made antibiotics, we end up with untreatable bacterial and other diseases, all of this forecast in the strongest possible terms in the past 20 years.

See also:

INTELLIGENCE for EARTH: Clarity, Diversity, Integrity, & Sustainability

The below book selections are pulled from Chapter 20 on 21st Century Counterintelligence:  Evaluating the Health of the Nation.  The fragementation of knowledge, and the ignorance of the media, the government, and the academy are now profoundly pathological.

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Journal: Stronger Signals of Armed Anger in USA

Civil Society, Collective Intelligence, Ethics, Government, Law Enforcement, Peace Intelligence
Armed Resistance in USA

There is a new nation-wide movement striving to innoculate the National Guard as well as state and local police forces against illegal orders from the Pentagon and the White House.  The basic loyalty to the Republic Oath elements are below.  This comes in reaction to three distinct tangibles and one unverified but provocative intangible that are circulating with increasing urgency among those who fear the two-party tyranny and a blindly-obedient Pentagon:

1)  Haliburton prison camps on US soil

2)  FEMA discussions with various state and local law enforcement agencies about “federalizing” state and local police in case of a “national” emergency

3)  Document said to be circulating within Washington on the prospects of an armed rebellion within the USA (we think secession and nullification much more likely, with armed resistance only if the federal government stupidly tries to use force against state and local resistance.

4)  Unverified but from a Special Forces source with eyes on and unblemished integrity: multiple US military camps, one in Washington State and one in Alabama, among other locations, at which battalion size units of foreign troops (men without a country) have been kept in isolation, armed and trained, for contingency use within the USA.  The same source says there is a long running PSYOP profiling program to identify for contingency need those  US military personnel who would be willing to disarm US citizens if ordered to do so.

Never thought we'd get to this point.  Visit the site above for a closer look.  This is a movement Of, By, and For We the People, and it has very strong West Point, retired USMC, and National Guard support. In our view, the US military itself is beginning to realize the topsy-turvy nature of the morphing of the Global War on Terror (which is a tactic, not a target) into a War on Liberty right here in America. As we have long maintained, it is vital that our military personnel remember that Integrity is about loyalty to the Constitution, not to the chain of command.

OATH KEEPERS: ORDERS WE WILL NOT OBEY

1. We will NOT obey orders to disarm the American people.

2. We will NOT obey orders to conduct warrantless searches of the American people

3. We will NOT obey orders to detain American citizens as “unlawful enemy combatants” or to subject them to military tribunal.

4. We will NOT obey orders to impose martial law or a “state of emergency” on a state.

5. We will NOT obey orders to invade and subjugate any state that asserts its sovereignty.

6. We will NOT obey any order to blockade American cities, thus turning them into giant concentration camps.

7. We will NOT obey any order to force American citizens into any form of detention camps under any pretext.

8. We will NOT obey orders to assist or support the use of any foreign troops on U.S. soil against the American people to “keep the peace” or to “maintain control.”

9. We will NOT obey any orders to confiscate the property of the American people, including food and other essential supplies. 10.We will NOT obey any orders which infringe on the right of the people to free speech, to peaceably assemble, and to petition their government for a redress of grievances.

Journal: Robert Baer on Transparency of Assassinations

07 Other Atrocities, 09 Terrorism, 10 Security, Cultural Intelligence, Government, Peace Intelligence

A Perfectly Framed Assassination

Stepped-up surveillance technology may be tipping the scales in the cat-and-mouse game between spies and their targets. Robert Baer on the current state of spycraft.

EXTRACT:

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I can only speculate about where exactly the hit went wrong. But I would guess the assassins failed to account for the marked advance in technology. Not only were there closed-circuit TV cameras in the hotel where Mr. Mabhouh was assassinated and at the airport, but Dubai has at its fingertips the best security consultants in the world. The consultants merely had to run advanced software through all of Dubai's digital data before, during and after the assassination to connect the assassins in time and place. For instance, a search of all cellular phone calls made in and around the hotel where Mr. Mabhouh was assassinated would show who had called the same number—reportedly a command post in Vienna. It would only be a matter then of tracking when and where calls were made from these phones, tying them to hotels where the team was operating or staying.

Phi Beta Iota: Robert Baer, who spoke to the international OSINT conference before the movie was made about his life as a case officer, is a most valued colleague who apart from being a speaker of truth and an author, has doubts about the 9/11 Commission and the general veracity of the U.S. Government.  He is a “tough love” patriot.  His newest opinion piece exposes the rapidly narrowing space for covert actions including assassinations and other behaviors that can no longer pass undetected.  As we pointed out a decade ago, it is no longer possible to create solid covers–instead of stealing or misappropriating them, we have been preaching 1) hire mid-career officers who have already built their covers unwittingly, and keep them in those real-world covers; and 2) stop doing the stupid shit.  95% of intelligence (decision-support) should b e legal and ethical.  All its takes is integrity and a leadership that actually knows something about full-spectrum intelligence and the point of it all: to create a Smart Nation.

Journal: Hunting Bin Laden

Government, Intelligence (Government/Secret), Military


Thomas Leo Briggs

The cover story in the February 2010 edition of Middle East Magazine, “Hunting Bin Laden“, leads with the statement that time may be running out for Osama bin Laden.  It goes on to say.

“Over the last two years or so, the elusive leader of Al Qaeda has seen dozens of his lieutenants and allies assassinated one after the other in Afghanistan and Pakistan in a whirlwind of attacks, often in the dead of night, by remote-controlled unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs). The stealthy craft, operated by the Central Intelligence Agency and the US air force, have become a weapon that has revolutionised warfare.”

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Anyone studying military history could not agree more.  The technological advances developed by the U.S. military since the first Gulf War have been staggering.  The combination of global positioning systems, laser guidance, detailed maps, radar, J-Stars, and moving target indicators made the delivery of bombs by piloted aircraft extremely accurate.  Now, with unmanned aircraft, tactical and strategic bomb delivery is ever more a major force multiplier.  Make a note here, however, that accurate and timely intelligence is the difference maker between bombing mistakes and successful air strikes.

The article alleges that American intelligence has improved over the last two to three years because of improved cooperation from Pashtun tribes.

“As the US braces for a major escalation in the war in Afghanistan and Pakistan, it is engaged in a new drive to kill or capture Bin Laden, declaring that he is the key to defeating Al Qaeda as a global threat.”

“That may be a rather fanciful rationale, but eight years after the Americans let him slip through their fingers at his Afghan mountain redoubt of Tora Bora, his last confirmed location on or about 16 December, 2001, they admit they haven’t a clue where he is now. The best guess is that he’s holed up in the lawless Waziristan tribal belt that runs along the rugged border with Afghanistan.”

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Journal: Suicide Bomber–CIA Cluster a Gift from God

08 Wild Cards, 09 Terrorism, 10 Security, Cultural Intelligence, Government

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Bomber Called C.I.A. Target Gift From God

By SCOTT SHANE February 28, 2010

In a posthumously released video message, the suicide bomber who killed seven C.I.A. employees on Dec. 30 said that his original target had been his handler from Jordanian intelligence, and that an invitation to meet C.I.A. officers at a remote base in Afghanistan had been an unexpected boon.

“We planned for something but got a bigger gift, a gift from Allah, who brought us, through his accompaniment, a valuable prey: Americans, and from the C.I.A.,” said the bomber, Humam Khalil Abu Mulal al-Balawi, a Jordanian physician who carried out the attack, in a 44-minute video posted on extremist Web sites Sunday.

FOR THE RECORD: Director Panetta has either not seen (because his staff filters his incoming) or has ignored direct offers of help, including one faxed to every seventh floor fax around his personal office.

Phi Beta Iota: CIA Director Leon Panetta is in way over his head, he's not even useful to the President, much less anyone else.  He has been deceived by his own people and has no idea how many sordid details of incompetence and plain misrepresentation are being withheld from him.  CIA has too many complacent over-promoted people who don't speak a foreign language, don't really understand foreign cultures, and have gotten by for decades on scraps from the table of foreign liaison and the tried and true practice of pretending that anyone who will take money is a valuable asset–all the while ignoring open sources and keeping the analysts locked in a closet far removed from reality.  His whining about public and professional observations of “poor tradecraft” inspired a riposte on “poor management.”  A careful examination of the individuals who died would have shown that only two of them should have been there at all, the Jordanian and one case officer–analysts, especially materal women with no field or combat experience, have no business being on the front lines.  By the by, has anyone introduced secure video teleconferencing to the process of analyst-asset interaction?  CIA is once again playing the numbers game, pretending that warm bodies and mediocre meaningless reports add up to “presence.”   Slow burn, once again.

See also:

Journal: Washington Post Explains CIA Suicide in AF

Journal: CIA as Poster Child For Dull US Intelligence

Journal: CIA’s Poor Tradecraft AND Poor Management

Journal: Cuba Makes Its Move–Hasta La Vista OAS?

07 Venezuela, 08 Wild Cards, Cultural Intelligence, Government, Strategy
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There is no reason why Latin America and the Caribbean should not have their own body of political consensus

Boys on the Beach

Speech by General of the Army Raúl Castro Ruz, president of the Councils of State and Ministers, at the plenary session of the Summit of Latin America and Caribbean Unity, February 23, 2010

The decision that we have just adopted to create the Community pf Latin American and Caribbean States is of great historical significance.

Cuba considers that the conditions are present to rapidly advance toward the constitution of a purely Latin American and Caribbean regional organization, comprising and representing the 33 independent nations of Latin America and the Caribbean.

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Journal: US Counterterrorism Hosed, EOP/OMB AWOL

08 Wild Cards, 09 Justice, 09 Terrorism, 10 Security, 11 Society, Ethics, Government, Law Enforcement, Methods & Process, Military, Peace Intelligence
Marcus Aurelius

Hurdles Stymie Counterterrorism Center

Tuesday, February 23, 2010

By ERIC SCHMITT and THOM SHANKER, The New York Times (Syndicated)

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WASHINGTON — The nation's main counterterrorism center, created in response to the intelligence failures in the years before Sept. 11, is struggling because of flawed staffing and internal cultural clashes, according to a new study financed by Congress.

The result, the study concludes, is a lack of coordination and communication among the agencies that are supposed to take the lead in planning the fight against terrorism, including the C.I.A. and the State Department.

. . . . . . .

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