Communities of Practice – Page 1049 – Public Intelligence Blog

The Trial of Bradley Manning — Rule of Law or Rule of Intimidation, Retaliation & Retribution

By Ann Wright

Yesterday, December 16, 2011, 40 supporters of Bradley Manning saw him in person in the military courtroom at Fort Meade, Maryland and another 60 saw him on a video feed from the court, the first time Manning has been seen by the public in 19 months. Over 100 other supporters, including 50 from Occupy Wall Street who had bused down from New York City, were at the front gates of Fort Meade in solidarity with Manning.

. . . . .

The military’s treatment of Manning has reeked of intimidation and retaliation.

Until citizen activist protests six months ago in March, 2011, brought sufficient attention to the harsh conditions of his pre-trial confinement, the US military was treating him as if he were beyond the scrutiny of the law — as if he were an “enemy combatant” in Guantanamo or Abu Ghraib.

. . . . .

Despite the military’s mantra of having the best military legal system in the world, the past treatment of Manning—keeping him in solitary confinement, forcing him to stand naked while in pre-trial confinement and the lack of compliance with the norms of the military legal system of a “speedy” trial have added to the low points of Abu Gharib and Guantanamo in the history of military “justice.”

The federal courts have long established mechanism of dealing with classified information in national security cases.

The military’s contention that it took 19 months to figure out how to try him while protecting classified materials reeks of intimidation, retribution and retaliation.

About the Author: Ann Wright is a retired US Army Reserve Colonel and a former US diplomat who resigned in 2003 in opposition to the Iraq war. She is a member of Veterans for Peace and is on the Advisory Board of the Bradley Manning Support Network

Read full article.

2011/12/16

Yoda: Opus machine prints books in minutes

Advanced Cyber/IO, Civil Society, Commerce, Methods & Process

yoda with light saber — Got Crowd? BE the Force!

Opus machine prints books in minutes at Politics and Prose

The new Opus machine at Politics and Prose bookstore on Connecticut Avenue in Washington can print and bind a book that is indistinguishable from one of the professionally mass-printed books on the shelves at the same store. Public domain works, out-of-print novels, electronic books supplied via publishing houses and personal books can all be printed in minutes while customers wait.

VIDEO 2:30 Via Washington Post

Phi Beta Iota: Price is always an issue. HOWEVER, now that “true cost” economics is converging with Occupy and the 99%, we anticipate that publishers and Amazon are in for an eye-opener. This will also empower authors who choose to by-pass the entire “system” and local book stores who can be liberated from inventory and publisher overhead.

2011/12/152011/12/15

Chuck Spinney: Political Fluff on Iraq vs Real-World Appraisals

03 Economy, 04 Inter-State Conflict, 05 Civil War, 05 Iran, 07 Other Atrocities, 08 Wild Cards, 10 Security, Corruption, Government, Military, Officers Call

After running for President in 2008 on a platform that criticized Iraq as a “dumb war,” Barack Obama just declared America’s misbegotten Iraqi adventure to be an “extraordinary achievement” in a speech to soldiers at Fort Bragg. That declaration of success is not enough for Congressman Duncan Hunter, who took Obama to task, saying, “And even now, as president, he refuses to acknowledge that victory was achieved,”

Such is the self-referencing nonsense produced in contemporary American political discourse shaped by a perpetual election cycle that disconnects debate from the real world and stifles rational governance, but keeps the masses entertained and distracted, much like the circuses did for the Roman masses in the waning days of the Empire. With American politicians are arguing endlessly how great a victory we achieved in Iraq, a natural question remains unasked: What does the rest of the world — particularly the Arab world — thinks of our ‘success'?

Attached, FYI, are two thoughtful alternative points of view on this question.

The first headline is from Rami Khouri's. He is a columnist for the Lebanese Daily Star and is syndicated by the prestigious Agence-Global. The second headline is from Patrick Cockburn's, writing in the Independent [UK]. He is one of the most well informed western reporters now writing about the Middle East.

Praise Tunisia, not the Iraqi nightmare

By Rami G. Khouri, Daily Star, 14 December 2012

The United States under President George W. Bush drew on a deep well of nonsense, lies and fantasy when it entered Iraq in 2003. President Barack Obama continued this bipartisan American tradition when he said Monday that the departure of American forces from Iraq left behind a country that can be a model for other aspiring democracies. On the other side of the Arab world on the same day, the Tunisian people elected a new president, providing a more credible example of how Arabs can aspire to become democratic without foreign armies destroying their national fabric. Read more.

Wars without victory equal an America without influence

World View: For all its military might, the US has failed to get its way in Afghanistan and Iraq, severely denting the prestige of the world's only superpower

Patrick Cockburn, Independent, 12 December 2011

Read full article.

Phi Beta Iota: Mr. Cockburn's article contains one major assumption, to wit that the US Government will not attack Iran nor condone an Israeli attack on Iran. We disagree. Now more than ever, Israel is bent on attacking Iran and drawing the US in–the deployment of US/NATO troops all around Syria, the plans for major NATO air operations ostensibly against Syria (long billed, falsely, as an Iranian puppet state) all point to precisely the opposite: a cresendo joint US-Israel mega-attack on Iran and Syria together.

2011/12/142011/12/14

Berto Jongman: The Kandahar Audio Casette Collection – Central to Understanding Emergence of Al Qaeda Prior to 9/11

09 Terrorism, 11 Society, Audio, Civil Society, Cultural Intelligence

Kandahar audiocassette collection

A collection of more than 1500 audiocassettes from Kandahar. The collection is central to understanding al-Qaida's emergence as an organisation before 9/11.

A first inventarisation and description can be found in: Flagg Miller. Insight from Bin Laden's audiocassette library in Kandahar. CTC Sentinel, 4(10), October 2011.

An analysis of Flag Miler can also be found in : J.Deol, Z. Kazmi (Eds) Contextualizing jihadi thought. New York: Horst & Company, Columbia University Press, 2012.

2011/12/14

NIGHTWATCH: Push-Back on US Across AF PK IR SY

02 Diplomacy, 04 Education, 05 Iran, 08 Wild Cards, 10 Security, 11 Society, Government, IO Multinational

In summary: US took ten years to make an issue of two Pakistani fertilizer factories that are the primary source for all Improvised Explosive Devices (IED) killing and maiming in AF. Taliban gets what it wants in AF school programs, Iran makes progress in AF, SY and on the side with Saudi Arabia.

Continue reading “NIGHTWATCH: Push-Back on US Across AF PK IR SY”

2011/12/132011/12/13

Winslow Wheeler: Leon Panetta & F-35 in a Nose Dive

Corruption, Military

WinslowWheeler Cropped — Winslow Wheeler

With his own words, Leon Panetta has shown that he is little more than a mouthpiece for keeping the defense budget at historically high levels and is incapable of coping with the coming era of modest (yes, modest) Pentagon budget reductions. Using DOD's budget history and the ongoing decay (not a typo) of our military forces at ever increasing spending levels as my perspective, I seek to explain in an essay that is running this morning at Time Magazine's Battleland blog. My thanks to journalist Mark Thompson for running this piece.

Is Leon Panetta the Right Man to be Secretary of Defense?

Winslow Wheeler

TIME Battlefield, December 13, 2011

Read full post with graphics.

This morning, three publications reported more (and important) information about a report submitted to Acting Acquisition Czar Robert Kendall in November about the F-35. This “Quick Look Report” was previously reported by Bloomberg News (Tony Capaccio). Today's articles expand the coverage of the contents of the report. These articles by Jason Sherman and colleagues at Inside Defense, Bill Sweetman of the Ares Defense Technology Blog, and Bob Cox at the Fort Worth Star Telegram are below.

F-35 Joint Strike Fighter Concurrency Quick Look Review

Concerns About JSF's Lethality, Survivability Triggered ‘Concurrency Risk' Review

JSF – What's Really Happening: Internal Pentagon report finds major problems with F-35 performance and components

Phi Beta Iota: A series of civilian and military leaders have willfully refused to be honest about the future of defense, to the point that we now have smaller older forces and we do not have what we need to implement anything even remotely like the 1998 “four forces after next.” DoD is in total amoral melt-down, where the 4% of the force that has integrity takes 80% of the casualties and receives 1% of the total budget–and still does not have a hand-held weapon able to out-gun the Taliban.

2011/12/132011/12/13

Mini-Me: End of the Delusional UAV Era

05 Iran, 08 Wild Cards, Corruption, DoD, InfoOps (IO), Intelligence (government), IO Deeds of War, Methods & Process, Military, Technologies

The Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV) rose to prominence in an era of uncontested budget growth (including a borrowed trillion dollars a year) and uncontested airspace. That era is now over.

There will still be a place for mico-UAVs, especially in direct support of small unit operations, but neither the US military nor the US secret intelligence world consider infantry solutions to be “expensive enough” to be worth doing well.

For those who lack the sophistication to hack control over a UAV and force its undamaged landing, Electromagnetic Pulse rays remain the generic counter-measure that will proliferate rapidly.

NIGHTWATCH:

Pakistan: Any unmanned aerial vehicles, including US UAVs, entering Pakistani air space will be treated as hostile and shot down per a new defense policy, a senior Pakistani official said on 10 December.

Comment: Pakistani forces lack the capabilities to execute the directive as announced, but the loss of one or two drones would be enough to curtail the program because of the expense from multiple aircraft losses. The program is not sustainable in contested airspace. This declaration has been coming for a very long time.

Algeria-US-France: For the record. US and French unmanned aerial vehicles (UAV) will not be allowed to fly over Algeria's southern airspace to counter weapons smuggling from Libya, according to El Khabar newspaper. Algeria will increase its reconnaissance of UAV air surveillance operations.

Comment: The Iranians will be quick to disseminate any insights they developed in downing a US reconnaissance drone. Algeria might not yet have Iran's insights but it is showing that it is open to Iranian help.

NIGHTWATCH KGS Home

Dolphin: Their Drones, Our Drones, and EMP Rays

Category: Communities of Practice

David Swanson: The Trial (or Torture?) of Bradley Manning