Chuck Spinney: Paris-Berlin-Moscow Axis Reinstated
02 Diplomacy, 03 Economy, 06 Russia, 08 Wild Cards, 09 Justice, 10 Security, 11 Society, Articles & Chapters, Earth Intelligence, Ethics, Government, IO Deeds of Peace, Peace Intelligence
The Paris-Berlin-Moscow Axis Back Again
by Immanuel Wallerstein
It always amazes me how the world's politicians and media spend most of their energy debating geopolitical prospects that are not going to happen, while ignoring major developments that are happening.
Here is a list of the most important coming non-events that we have been loudly debating and analyzing: Israel is not going to bomb Iran. The euro is not going to disappear. Outside powers are not going to engage in military action inside Syria. The upsurge of worldwide popular unrest is not going to fade away.
Meanwhile, to minimal serious coverage in the media and on the internet, the Nord Stream was inaugurated in Lubmin on Germany's Baltic Coast on Nov. 8 in the presence of Pres. Medvedev of Russia and the prime ministers of Germany, France, and the Netherlands, plus the director of Gazprom, Russia's gas exporter, and the European Union's Energy Commissioner. This is a geopolitical game-changer, unlike all the widely discussed non-events that are not going to happen.
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NIGHTWATCH: Iran – Turkey – Brazil Nuclear Axis
01 Brazil, 04 Inter-State Conflict, 05 Iran, 06 Russia, 07 Other Atrocities, 08 Proliferation, 09 Justice, 10 Security, 11 Society, Blog Wisdom, Counter-Oppression/Counter-Dictatorship Practices, Earth Intelligence, Ethics, Government, Officers CallTurkey-Iran: A senior Iranian official recently said Iran is willing to share its nuclear technological capability with neighboring, friendly countries, which could include helping Turkey build an atomic power plant.
For years Turkey has tried to build a nuclear power plant, but no Western country has been willing to help, the official said, adding that this is true for other countries in the region. Iran is also willing to cooperate with Brazil in the nuclear field, he said.
Comment: Energy policy provides a basis for an expansion of Iranian influence and presence in the Middle East and Brazil.
Phi Beta Iota: The insanity of US foreign and security policy is breath-taking, and only explainable in the context of an out of control government that is advancing pathological short-term corporate interests. Brazil does not need Iran's help on nuclear energy. What is interesting here, in combination with the French-German-Russian Axis [and more distantly, India-Pakistan and China-Asia] is the isolation of the US Government – the world is beginning to isolate the pathogen.
John Robb: Understanding Pathogenic Behavior
03 Economy, Blog Wisdom, Commerce, Commercial Intelligence, Corruption, Cultural Intelligence, Government, IO Sense-Making, Military
Within human social and economic systems, pathogenic behavior is spreading. This is particularly true among powerful, successful, and wealthy people (finance, economics, politics, etc.) in the developed world. What specifically do I mean by pathogenic? An ever greater number of these people are adopting behaviors that are actively hostile to the human systems we rely upon. They actually think it is OK to put these systems at risk for personal benefit. This is very dangerous. Given the massive amounts of network, technological, and financial leverage that's currently available to these people, even a single bad actor can wreak global havoc like never before (as in, they could cause an economic collapse that's so severe that it could kill more people than every war we've ever had to date, combined).
So, why is this happening and how can we prevent it? This has been a tough section of the book I'm currently writing. Fortunately, I think I'm starting to unravel it. Here we go. In order to understand why some bad actors are willing to do grievous harm to the complex systems they rely upon, we need to visit the cutting edge of microbiology. Let's start that exploration with a look at an amazing article by Brett Finlay in the Scientific American called, “Stopping Infections: The Art of Bacteriological Warfare.”
Good, Neutral, and Bad Bacteria
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Google Effect: Signs of Intelligence in the UK
Corruption, Cultural Intelligence, Government
‘Google Effect' Raised Bar for Spies to ‘Produce Secret Intelligence': Ex-UK Intelligence Chief
The rise of the web and Google means that spies in the UK need to work really hard to produce genuinely secret intelligence, former director of the country's intelligence agency has said.
Former chief of the Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ) Sir David Pepper pointed out that “the Google effect” of so much information being readily available online had “very substantially” raised the “threshold for producing intelligence” for MI5, MI6 and GCHQ.
“Nobody wants the easy stuff anymore and there is no point spending effort and money collecting it,” the Telegraph quoted Sir David, as saying.
“Many of the sort of things for which (officials) once would have turned to the intelligence agencies are now readily available to them online,” he added.
Sir David said that with the help of technologies like Google Maps and Streeview anyone could now see photographic detail of far away countries, which hitherto would have been available only through secret and highly sophisticated national satellites.
“Intelligence producers have had to become very sensitive to this phenomenon and very careful not to put effort into producing intelligence that purports to be secret which is in fact not secret at all,” he added.
Tip of the Hat to AFIO.
Phi Beta Iota: Evidently the British have not yet realized that intelligence is about decision-support outputs rather than secret inputs, but at least they have a clue with respect to open sources. In another related article, AFIO points to Congress asking the US secret intelligence community to focus on domestic targets–marijuana growing on federal lands is evidently a major threat to national security, along with the majority of the US population that supports its legalization. Evidently corruption and idiocy in Congress complement each other. Meanwhile, CIA–with the explicit abdication of moral or intellectual leadership from the DNI– fights the Open Source Agency with every dirty trick it can muster including outright lies to Congress and the media. All this means is that the US Government will remain very expensively stupid, while other countries advance the M4IS aspect of the craft of intelligence.
See Also:
Continue reading “Google Effect: Signs of Intelligence in the UK”
Video: Woman Shows Court Order to NYPD, Gets Punched in Face
Corruption, Law EnforcementPhi Beta Iota: Watch the whole thing. Mayor Bloomberg has created a police state.
See Also:
2011 Thinking About Revolution in the USA and Elsewhere (Full Text Online for Google Translate)
Chuck Spinney: Washington Remains Clueless
07 Other Atrocities, Corruption, Government
NOVEMBER 14, 2011
Only Washington Remains Clueless
The Passing of the Postwar Era
by ANDREW BACEVICH, Counterpunch
This article was originally published by TomDispatch.
In every aspect of human existence, change is a constant. Yet change that actually matters occurs only rarely. Even then, except in retrospect, genuinely transformative change is difficult to identify. By attributing cosmic significance to every novelty and declaring every unexpected event a revolution, self-assigned interpreters of the contemporary scene — politicians and pundits above all — exacerbate the problem of distinguishing between the trivial and the non-trivial.
Phi Beta Iota: This is one of Bacevich's best pieces. He frames and then itemizes four converging vectors: the collapse of the freedom agenda; the Great Recession; the Arab Spring; and Europe's demise, this time without an American rescue being possible. He quite adroitly illuminates the idiocy, ideology, and insipidness of all of the Republican candidates, while dismissing the incumbent in passing. What he does NOT cover is the depth of the corruption that created these four vectors, or the deep white-hot anger among the 99% that are now awake to the treason committed by their elected officials–not just in the USA, but across the Western world less the Nordics and The Netherlands.
