Communities of Practice – Page 987 – Public Intelligence Blog

Recovery or Collapse? Bet on Collapse

May 20, 2012

The US financial system and, probably, the financial system of Europe, like the police, no longer serves a useful social purpose.

In the US the police have proven themselves to be a greater threat to public safety than private sector criminals. I just googled “police brutality” and up came 183,000,000 results. (Here are two recent brutal assaults, one deadly, by police on hapless individuals: http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/lanow/2012/05/kelly-thomas-video-dad-they-are-killing-me-.html and http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article31364.htm )

The cost to society of the private financial system is even higher. Writing in CounterPunch (May 18), Rob Urie reports that two years ago Andrew Haldane, executive Director for Financial Stability at the Bank of England (the UK’s version of the Federal Reserve) said that the financial crisis, now four years old, will in the end cost the world economy between $60 trillion and $200 trillion in lost GDP. If Urie’s report is correct, this is an astonishing admission from a member of the ruling elite. http://www.counterpunch.org/2012/05/18/the-true-costs-of-bank-crises/print

Try to get your mind around these figures. The US GDP, the largest in the world, is about 15 trillion. What Haldane is telling us is that the financial crisis will end up costing the world lost real income between 4 and 13 times the size of the current Gross Domestic Product of the United States. This could turn out to be an optimistic forecast.

In the end, the financial crisis could destroy Western civilization.

Continue reading “Paul Craig Roberts: Recovery or Collapse? I'm Betting Collapse”

2012/05/21

Chuck Spinney: The Afghanistan Exit – Looting the Useful Idiots to the Bitter End

04 Inter-State Conflict, 08 Wild Cards, 10 Security, Cultural Intelligence, Government, Idiocy, Military

When Alexander the Great decided to leave Afghanistan, his plan was to exit via the Khyber Pass and march though what is now Pakistan and thence into India. But the Khyber was blocked by a warring Pashtun tribe. Legend has it that Alex's exit strategy was to bribe another Pashtun tribe to open the door by attacking and driving off the first tribe. The gambit worked and he escaped with his forces largely intact, Alexander looked shrewd in the history books. But is that the whole story?

I have often wondered if old Alex was snookered by two tribes in cahoots in a scheme to extort money and divide the proceeds from an invader desperate to leave. Of course we will never know if this actually happened, but as the following report in yesterday's Sunday Times suggests, my speculation has a quintessential Pashtun flavor and is therefore not outside the realm of probability.

Chuck Spinney
Port Cogolin, France

Afghan Troops And Tailban In Pact To Loot NATO Convoys

Secret alliances threaten to undermine the West's strategy of handing more responsibility for security to local forces

By Miles Amoore and Christina Lamb, London Sunday Times, May 20, 2012

THE two men should be sworn enemies. One is a Taliban commander waging what he says is a holy war against foreign soldiers in Afghanistan. The other is an Afghan army officer trained and paid by Nato to fight the Taliban.

Yet rather than do battle, the two men have forged a secret alliance. In the area of Ghazni province where both are based, just an hour's drive south of Kabul, they collaborate to loot Nato supply convoys, dividing up the proceeds. They even share intelligence about military operations.

Continue reading “Chuck Spinney: The Afghanistan Exit – Looting the Useful Idiots to the Bitter End”

2012/05/21

David Swanson: Lisa Savage on Why She Heckled Tony Blair

Academia, Cultural Intelligence, Ethics

Why I Heckled Tony Blair, War Criminal, at Colby College Graduation

BY LISA SAVAGE

If you woke on a beautiful spring Sunday in May on a pond in Maine, what would you do? A canoe ride on water as smooth as glass, and breakfast on the deck, perhaps — followed by disrupting international war criminal Tony Blair at Colby College graduation in Waterville!

Who knew our protest would lead news coverage of the ceremony? (Washington Post, WGME, Houston Chronicle, and Daily Mail, to name a few.)

With the BLAIR IS A WAR CRIMINAL sign I scrawled hastily in pink lipstick, we approached the back row of the outdoor ceremony where the former British PM, who lied about WMDs in Iraq and has the blood on his hands of thousands of innocent civilians, was to speak.

Before we even made it off the street we were approached by a man from Vermont who said, “Thank you for being here. I was disgusted that Colby would invite such a slimy speaker for graduation this year.” (More of the disgusted were heard from in Op-Ed News and the local newspapers.)

Activists Protest in Chicago — Click on Image to Enlarge

– – – – – – – – –

As we left the campus I saw an acquaintance who works at Colby, in a pretty dress, standing obediently off to one side.

I feel that the passivity and complicity of US citizens in the dirty dealings of NATO and its member nations, blindly paying federal taxes every year to fund the slaughter of innocents, afraid to protest, afraid to rock the boat for fear of job loss or being seen as impolite, is actually the biggest threat to global security.

And that's why, as my compatriots were protesting the disgusting spectacle of the NATO summit in Chicago this weekend, I disrupted Colby College's graduation ceremony.

Read full article.

Phi Beta Iota: The unasked questions pertain to the judgment and moral vacuum of the university leadership that invited Blair in the first place, and the empty heads of the graduates that did not think to question the invitation. We are running short of good people with both intelligence and integrity. Evil is assuredly in the ascent.

2012/05/202012/05/20

Gordon Duff: Veterans Today Open Letter to President Obama

07 Other Atrocities, 11 Society, Civil Society, Corruption, Cultural Intelligence, Ethics, Government

Mr. President, We Have Had Enough

Time For You To Finally Listen

By Gordon Duff, Senior Editor

Mr. President, here is my statement of purpose. I am just a writer, not even by decent standards an “activist.” We supported you four years ago, my estimate producing about 50,000 votes. We are much more than ten times that now. Please ask someone, we, even I, control more votes than you can imagine, more than any newspaper in the United States.

As for some kind of report, please get yourself properly informed as to who your base is and what we expect. We are not the idiots we were, not so many of us. Treating us as such is an epic error.

This week, we watched the NDAA “Soviet America” bill overturned by a court, a bill you signed but said you did so only reluctantly. It was illegal when you signed it and continuing to do things like this, you and congress, is wearing thin. We are losing patience. We don’t even hate you. You made sure of that by cleverly manipulating the GOP into nominating the most hateful, criminal and abysmal candidate in its history.

A Mormon bishop whose religious beliefs are totally inconsistent with freedom, equality, peace and honesty, as president? What could any of them have been thinking?

Romney could actually be a member of the Bush family. Perhaps we should check on that. Running against a crook doesn’t make up for years of smooth talk, of phony “populism” and bowing to special interest. We are totally sick of it and now it is you and the incompetence of those around you that is destroying America and killing us.

Continue reading “Gordon Duff: Veterans Today Open Letter to President Obama”

2012/05/202012/05/20

Mini-Me: Obamacide of the American Nation – Adverse Drug Reaction Holocaust

03 Economy, 07 Health, 07 Other Atrocities, Civil Society, Commerce, Corruption, Government, Law Enforcement, Office of Management and Budget

Huh?

Obamacide Of American Nation Warned to Accelerate

By: Sorcha Faal, and as reported to her Western Subscribers

A shocking in depth report written by Acting Minister Tatyana Golikova of the Ministry of Healthcare and Social Development (MHSD) sent to President Putin this past week on the economic and social-political ramifications of the 2-year old United States law titled Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (otherwise known as Obamacare) warns that this scheme is, in fact, a “codified system of mass genocide” never before seen in all of human history.

According to this report, prior to this law passing in early 2010, the Obama regime made a “secret deal” with all of the United States drug companies with their head lobbyist confirming this to be true in a recently discovered email from Billy Tauzin, the head of Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America (PhRMA), to former White House Deputy Chief of Staff Jim Messina (who is now Obama’s 2012 campaign manager) clearly stating before this laws passage, “we will deliver a final yes to you by morning.”

The “secret agreement” made between the Obama regime and these American drug companies, this report says, was that in exchange for the US not prosecuting them for the deaths due to their faulty (if not outright fraudulent) drugs foisted upon the American people, they would, in turn, all agree not to campaign against Obamacare nor spend any money advertising against it.

To the number of deaths directly related to these American drug companies fearing US government retribution, this report continues, the facts are beyond shocking and detail how faulty and fraudulent pharmaceuticals have killed at least 2 million Americans over the past decade alone.

Acting Minister Golikova even more grimly notes in her report that the figure of 2 million Americans being killed by US government-drug company collusion may, in fact, be even higher as the estimated death figures she used were those detailed by the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) on their own official webpage that lists these deplorable statistics:

Continue reading “Mini-Me: Obamacide of the American Nation – Adverse Drug Reaction Holocaust”

2012/05/202016/03/25

Who’s Who in Peace Intelligence: Col Ted Westhusing, USA (RIP)

09 Justice, 10 Security, 11 Society, Corruption, Ethics, Government, Law Enforcement, Military, Officers Call

Colonel Theodore S. Westhusing (November 17, 1960 – June 5, 2005),^[1] a West Point professor of English and Philosophy, volunteered to serve in Iraq in late 2004 and died in Baghdad from an allegedly self-inflicted gunshot wound in June 2005. At the time he was the highest ranked American to die violently in Iraq since the start of the March 2003 United States-led invasion. He was 44 years old, married with three young children.

The following is the suicide note left by Col. Westhusing to his commanding officer General Petraeus. The note was featured in an article by Robert Pryce, published in the Texas Observer on March 8, 2007:^[9]

Thanks for telling me it was a good day until I briefed you. [Redacted name]—You are only interested in your career and provide no support to your staff—no msn [mission] support and you don’t care. I cannot support a msn that leads to corruption, human right abuses and liars. I am sullied—no more. I didn’t volunteer to support corrupt, money grubbing contractors, nor work for commanders only interested in themselves. I came to serve honorably and feel dishonored. I trust no Iraqi. I cannot live this way. All my love to my family, my wife and my precious children. I love you and trust you only. Death before being dishonored any more. Trust is essential—I don’t know who trust anymore. [sic] Why serve when you cannot accomplish the mission, when you no longer believe in the cause, when your every effort and breath to succeed meets with lies, lack of support, and selfishness? No more. Reevaluate yourselves, cdrs [commanders]. You are not what you think you are and I know it.

COL Ted Westhusing

Life needs trust. Trust is no more for me here in Iraq.

Works by Col Ted Westhusing

Ted Westhusing (2003). A Beguiling Military Virtue: Honor. Journal of Military Ethics 2 (3):195-212.

Ted Westhusing (2003). Taking Terrorism and ROE Seriously. Journal of Military Ethics 2 (1):1-19.

Ted Westhusing (2002). ‘Target Approval Delays Cost Air Force Key Hits': Targeting Terror: Killing Al Qaeda the Right Way. Journal of Military Ethics 1 (2):128-135.

Links to Specific Stories and Comment by Robert Steele Below the Line

Continue reading “Who's Who in Peace Intelligence: Col Ted Westhusing, USA (RIP)”

2012/05/192012/05/19

Mini-Me: Veteran’s Today Warns of False Flag Terror in US End of May — Russians Exercising in US Around NORTHCOM with Mission to Take and Hold Denver Airport…G-8 Moved to Camp David

06 Russia, 07 Other Atrocities, 08 Wild Cards, 09 Justice, 10 Security, 11 Society, Blog Wisdom, Corruption, DHS, Director of National Intelligence et al (IC), DoD, Government, IO Deeds of War, Law Enforcement, Military, Officers Call

Huh?

U.S. False Flag Likely May 20-31, 2012

By Captain Eric H. May, Ghost Troop CO

The breaking news from Chicago, ‘NATO 3’ had targeted Obama campaign HQ, Rahm’s house, police stations, prosecutors say, concurs with the analysis below:

The United States is hosting the G8, NATO and the Bilderberg Group in a two-week span, during which elite Russian troops will be occupying key points near Northern Command (NORTHCOM), and it isn’t hard to imagine another 9/11 coming from such a sinister combination of brains and brawn.

Starting with the premise that a false flag attack by the end of May is more likely than not, I’ll present the odds for the top targets and most dangerous days, then evaluate the various entities and individuals likely to be involved.

The top U.S. targets are:

Continue reading “Mini-Me: Veteran's Today Warns of False Flag Terror in US End of May — Russians Exercising in US Around NORTHCOM with Mission to Take and Hold Denver Airport…G-8 Moved to Camp David”

Category: Communities of Practice

Paul Craig Roberts: Recovery or Collapse? I’m Betting Collapse