Category: Military

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

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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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David Isenberg: The True Cost (Locally) of Military Strikes Against Iranian Nuclear Targets + Iran Nuclear Meta-RECAP

05 Iran, 08 Wild Cards, Corruption, IO Deeds of War, Military
David Isenberg

The Myth of “Surgical Strikes” on Iran

By David Isenberg

TIME Battleland | October 18, 2012

For all the years that the world has focused on the confrontation between Western nations and Iran, oceans of ink have been spilled over many aspects of its nuclear program — the quantity and quality of its enriched uranium, various UN Security Council resolutions, the number of Iranian centrifuges, IAEA safeguards, compliance with the Non-Proliferation Treaty, diplomatic negotiations, red lines, U.S. and Israeli attack scenarios, possible Iranian responses, the impact of a nuclear Iran, and so on.

Yet, almost nothing has been written about one critical factor: the impact on Iranian civilians, if the U.S. and/or the Israelis were to attack Iran’s nuclear facilities.

That vacuum has now been filled, thanks to a recent lengthy report — The Ayatollah’s Nuclear Gamble: The Human Cost of Military Strikes Against Iran’s Nuclear Facilities. It was authored by Khosrow Semnani, an Iranian-American industrialist and philanthropist with extensive experience in the industrial management of nuclear waste and chemicals.

The University of Utah’s Hinckley Institute of Politics and Omid for Iran, a nonprofit organization based in Salt Lake City, Utah, published the assessment. Author Semnani has provided support for conferences and educational initiatives in the United States.

The report examined various military options against different sites but regardless – perhaps it shouldn’t come as a surprise — the news was horrifyingly bad for Iraqi civilians. Iran insists its nuclear-development efforts are for peaceful purposes, and that it has no desire to build atomic weapons.

Continue reading “David Isenberg: The True Cost (Locally) of Military Strikes Against Iranian Nuclear Targets + Iran Nuclear Meta-RECAP”

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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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DefDog: Reuters – Western Defense Cuts May Be Unstoppable – The Era of Rising Spending on Weapons and Wars is Over

Commerce, Economics/True Cost, Government, Military
DefDog

Western defense budget cuts may be unstoppable

Companies, governments already preparing for reduced military spending

Peter Apps,, updated 10/13/2012

WASHINGTON — Whether or not America's politicians can find a way to sidestep the brutal automatic military cuts of sequestration, the era of rising Western spending on weapons and wars is over.

That reality increasingly is challenging major arms manufacturers, spurring them to look for new markets, cost cuts and mergers. It is also confronting policymakers with difficult political and strategic choices as new rivals, particularly China, spend more on their armed forces.

U.S. military spending still dwarfs that of other countries – the equivalent of the next 13 nations' spending by some estimates – but the global military balance is clearly shifting. With European states already cutting, the London-based International Institute for Strategic Studies this year reported that Asian military spending outstripped Europe's for the first time in several centuries.

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