Communities of Practice – Page 992 – Public Intelligence Blog

2012/05/112012/05/11

Marcus Aurelius: British Agent, American Leak, Who’s on First?

09 Terrorism, 10 Security, Articles & Chapters, Corruption, Cultural Intelligence, Director of National Intelligence et al (IC), Government, IO Deeds of War

Marcus-Aurelius-150x150 — Marcus Aurelius

British secret agent was al-Qaeda mole who cracked new ‘underpants' bomb plot

A British undercover agent infiltrated al-Qaeda, volunteered to be a suicide bomber and smuggled out the latest version of the deadly underpants bomb, it can be disclosed.

Read full article.

CIA launches inquiry into media leaks over ‘underpants' double agent

US spy chief James Clapper has ordered an inquiry into leaks to media outlets that exposed how the CIA foiled an al-Qaeda plot using a spy who infiltrated the terror group, officials said Wednesday.

Read full article.

Phi Beta Iota: There are three levels here. First, it is most likely the leak came from the White House, deliberately, and the IC investigation is mostly for show–and to make the subtle point that their investigation cannot cover the White House (if we had a proper national counterintelligence capability and the FBI had integrity, this would not be happening). Second, as we found in Central America and elsewhere, the White House runs its own intelligence and covert action operations without regard to the secret intelligence chain of command, and we have no doubt that John Brennan is playing a double game (pun intended). Third and last, if this is real, and we are inclined to think that it is not, it should be said that the British can be very very good, and the UK has the most target-rich environment on the planet for recruiting penetrations — it also has the most extremist penetrations of legitimate groups. Just as the Soviets nailed every recruited emigree sent back in after WWII, we suspect that the extremists have a better grip on their own community than the Brits do. In terms of evaluating the integrity of the British, we remind one and all that they supported the White House on all the lies about Iraq, and even went so low as to plagarize an unclassified paper from the Moneterey Institute of International Relations (MIIR), a desperate move made necessary in their eyes because they had no secret sources and had no real knowledge. On balance, this smells.

2012/05/102012/05/10

Winslow Wheeler: Marine Aviation in the Toilet (Ethically, Technically, & Financially)

04 Inter-State Conflict, 10 Security, Blog Wisdom, Corruption, DoD, Military

WinslowWheeler Cropped — Winslow Wheeler

Last week I circulated a piece discusing an eight page advertising special in The Washington Post, paid for by Lockheed-Martin and Boeing (and a credit union). The huge ad commemorated the 100th anniversary of Marine Corps aviation. (My piece with a link to the advertisement is at the end of this message.) In the special advertising section the Marine Corps' Commandant and Deputy Commandant for Aviation, among others, proclaimed that Marine air was wholly focused on supporting “ground troops,” especially while engaged in combat–thereby demonstrating the Marines' warrior ethic and devotion to one of its proudest traditions. Unsurprisingly, the ad also loudly touted Boeing's V-22 and Lockheed's F-35B as the contemporary embodiment of the Marine air tradition.<

David Evans is a retired Marine. He retired as a Lieutenant Colonel, after which he worked as a widely respected journalist for the Chicago Tribune. When I sent him my piece on the Marines' self praise, paid for by Lockheed and Boeing, he immediately responded that the proclamation of a focus only on air support for troops in combat rang hollow. I asked him to write up his concerns; the following 1,500 word analysis was the result. It makes important and informative reading. It exposes the sophistry of the ad's assertions, and it is an excellent explanation of how technology proclaimed to be a leap ahead can in reality be a step backwards–at great additional cost. The discussion of the V-22 and F-35 compared to cheaper, more effective systems–available earlier–is very instructive.

David's essay is also here as a Word document: David Evans on F-35 and V-22

Vow to ‘Support Ground Troops' Rings Hollow

For sheer sophistry, deception and delusion, it is hard to top the status report “100 Years of Marine Corps Aviation” that appeared as an advertising supplement arriving in this former Marine's Washington Post newspaper on 2 May 2012 (located at http://issuu.com/wpcustomcontent/docs/usmc). My view is that Marine aviation is now broken, riven by exploding costs, starkly troubled development programs and, above all, the triumph of technical wants over tactical needs.

The Marine Corps could have had superior flying machines at dramatically less cost to acquire and maintain. There is an old aphorism about “pride goeth before the fall” that certainly applies. The country cannot afford these habits and the junior Marines at the “pointy end” deserve better for tactical support.

The eight-page supplement was dominated by breathless paeans to the Marines' two dominant aircraft modernization programs, the V-22 tilt-rotor, a troop hauler which takes off and lands like a helicopter but flies like a turboprop airliner, and the F-35B, a jet that will similarly be capable of short take-offs and vertical landings but fly to the battlefield at supersonic speed.

Neither machine will deliver on its heady promises.

Continue reading “Winslow Wheeler: Marine Aviation in the Toilet (Ethically, Technically, & Financially)”

2012/05/102012/05/10

David Stockman: Emperor Naked, Bond Market Explodes Next

03 Economy, Civil Society, Commerce, Commercial Intelligence, Corruption, Government

The Emperor is Naked: David Stockman

Testosterone Pit, May 9, 2012

Contributed by Karen Roche and JT Long of The Gold Report. A “paralyzed” Federal Reserve Bank, in its “final days,” held hostage by Wall Street “robots” trading in markets that are “artificially medicated” are just a few of the bleak observations shared by David Stockman, former Republican U.S. Congressman and director of the Office of Management and Budget. He is also a founding partner of Heartland Industrial Partners and the author of The Triumph of Politics: Why Reagan's Revolution Failed and the soon-to-be released The Great Deformation: How Crony Capitalism Corrupts Free Markets and Democracy. The Gold Report caught up with Stockman for this exclusive interview at the recent Recovery Reality Check conference (5/4/12).

The Gold Report: David, you have talked and written about the effect of government-funded, debt-fueled spending on the stock market. What will be the real impact of quantitative easing?

David Stockman: We are in the last innings of a very bad ball game. We are coping with the crash of a 30-year–long debt super-cycle and the aftermath of an unsustainable bubble.

Quantitative easing is making it worse by facilitating more public-sector borrowing and preventing debt liquidation in the private sector—both erroneous steps in my view. The federal government is not getting its financial house in order. We are on the edge of a crisis in the bond markets. It has already happened in Europe and will be coming to our neighborhood soon.

TGR: What should the role of the Federal Reserve be?

DS: To get out of the way and not act like it is the central monetary planner of a $15 trillion economy. It cannot and should not be done.

The Fed is destroying the capital market by pegging and manipulating the price of money and debt capital. Interest rates signal nothing anymore because they are zero. The yield curve signals nothing anymore because it is totally manipulated by the Fed. The very idea of “Operation Twist” is an abomination.

Capital markets are at the heart of capitalism and they are not working. Savers are being crushed when we desperately need savings. The federal government is borrowing when it is broke. Wall Street is arbitraging the Fed's monetary policy by borrowing overnight money at 10 basis points and investing it in 10-year treasuries at a yield of 200 basis points, capturing the profit and laughing all the way to the bank. The Fed has become a captive of the traders and robots on Wall Street.

TGR: If we are in the final innings of a debt super-cycle, what is the catalyst that will end the game?

DS: I think the likely catalyst is a breakdown of the U.S. government bond market. It is the heart of the fixed income market and, therefore, the world's financial market.

Because of Fed management and interest-rate pegging, the market is artificially medicated. All of the rates and spreads are unreal. The yield curve is not market driven. Supply and demand for savings and investment, future inflation risk discounts by investors—none of these free market forces matter. The price of money is dictated by the Fed, and Wall Street merely attempts to front-run its next move.

As long as the hedge fund traders and fast-money boys believe the Fed can keep everything pegged, we may limp along. The minute they lose confidence, they will unwind their trades.

On the margin, nobody owns the Treasury bond; you rent it. Trillions of treasury paper is funded on repo: You buy $100 million (M) in Treasuries and immediately put them up as collateral for overnight borrowings of $98M. Traders can capture the spread as long as the price of the bond is stable or rising, as it has been for the last year or two. If the bond drops 2%, the spread has been wiped out.

If that happens, the massive repo structures—that is, debt owned by still more debt—will start to unwind and create a panic in the Treasury market. People will realize the emperor is naked.

Continue reading “David Stockman: Emperor Naked, Bond Market Explodes Next”

2012/05/102012/05/10

Mini-Me: Agents of Religion – Religion of Agents

07 Other Atrocities, 09 Justice, 09 Terrorism, 10 Security, 10 Transnational Crime, Articles & Chapters, Commercial Intelligence, Corruption, Cultural Intelligence, Government, Intelligence (government)

Huh?

AGENTS OF RELIGION-RELIGION OF AGENTS (Vol. I): THE INFLUENCE OF FAITH IN THE INTELLIGENCE SERVICES

Zhyldyz Oskonbaeva (RIEAS Senior Advisor & Eurasian Liaison)

NEWSLETTER Issue #5 – May 2012 (Mediterranean Council for Intelligence Studies)

The more followers you have, the stronger is their belief in you. The more believers you have, the greater your chances of getting elected. With both you can rule the nation. The difference between the two is that believers will fight for their cause. This forms the basis for real power (From author).

The influence of religion is such that power, order and government perceive their effects as a stabilizer on society as well as the legitimation of their rule. Depending on the history, the state depends on a society that is moral, consistent and trusting in their institutions. As decision makers, real power ensures that their decisions will be both supported and followed by society. From the very beginning of society, religious institutions fought for “believers-parishioners.” As a result, politics borrows from religion in that it is a secularization of bureaucratic competencies formally entrusted to an absolute ruler ‘personally’ chosen by a supreme being and counseled by his representative on earth – embodied as the senior religious leader. Sometimes this symbiotic relationship is equal, sometimes dependent upon the other but always it is both visual and implied. What both understand is that power is expressed in numbers which is something they both need.

This analysis is a series of articles consisting of historical and contemporary facts in order to examine this relationship in more detail. By minimizing editorial comment and without bias to any particular religion, the intent to explore a dimension that remains largely underexplored in modern scholarship. In other words if intelligence professionals are dedicated patriots above the norm then what effect does religion play in the composition of their national identity and their duties in serving the state?

Continue reading “Mini-Me: Agents of Religion – Religion of Agents”

2012/05/102012/05/10

David Swanson: Colin Powell’s Treason – Lest We Forget

Blog Wisdom, Civil Society, Corruption, Cultural Intelligence, Government, IO Deeds of War, Law Enforcement, Military, Officers Call, Peace Intelligence

Colin Powell's Tangled Web

“I get mad when bloggers accuse me of lying — of knowing the information was false. I didn’t.” — Colin Powell.

Can you imagine having an opportunity to address the United Nations Security Council about a matter of great global importance, with all the world's media watching, and using it to… well, to make shit up – to lie with a straight face, and with a CIA director propped up behind you, I mean to spew one world-class, for-the-record-books stream of bull, to utter nary a breath without a couple of whoppers in it, and to look like you really mean it all? What gall. What an insult to the entire world that would be.

Colin Powell doesn't have to imagine such a thing. He has to live with it. He did it on February 5, 2003. It's on videotape.

I tried to ask him about it in the summer of 2004. He was speaking to the Unity Journalists of Color convention in Washington, D.C. The event had been advertised as including questions from the floor, but for some reason that plan was revised. Speakers from the floor were permitted to ask questions of four safe and vetted journalists of color before Powell showed up, and then those four individuals could choose to ask him something related – which of course they did not, in any instance, do.

Bush and Kerry spoke as well. The panel of journalists who asked Bush questions when he showed up had not been properly vetted. Roland Martin of the Chicago Defender had slipped onto it somehow (which won't happen again!). Martin asked Bush whether he was opposed to preferential college admissions for the kids of alumni and whether he cared more about voting rights in Afghanistan than in Florida. Bush looked like a deer in the headlights, only without the intelligence. He stumbled so badly that the room openly laughed at him.

Continue reading “David Swanson: Colin Powell's Treason – Lest We Forget”

2012/05/10

Sepp Hassleberger: Open Source Car Created in Three Months – Interview

03 Economy, 11 Society, Advanced Cyber/IO, Blog Wisdom, Commercial Intelligence, Communities of Practice, Cultural Intelligence, Ethics, Future-Oriented, Hacking, Liberation Technology, Methods & Process

Interviewing Joe Justice from Team Wikispeed on the Future of Manufacturing (and Consumption)

Joe Justice is the ideator of Team Wikspeed: a team of volunteers distributed around the world who recently created a prototype car that is open source, modular and ultra-efficient in just three mo… …YES, in just three months compared with the years it takes traditional car manufacturers to bring out a new model.

Bin Laden Show 00: Taliban Offer Pre-9/11 and Post-9/11, US Rejection

04 Inter-State Conflict, 07 Other Atrocities, 08 Wild Cards, 09 Justice, 09 Terrorism, 10 Security, 11 Society, Blog Wisdom, Corruption, Government, Peace Intelligence

Interview with Mullah Omar, Arnaud de Borchgrave (June 2001) – Very important and rare interview with Mullah Omar the head of the Taliban almost three months before 9-11 on the front page of the Washington Times (June 18). Omar suggested Osama bin Ladin was a problem he wanted to resolve. Bush Administration showed no interest in pursuing this lead. The information in de Borchgrave’s 2001 report is consistent with that in an important report issued in February 2011 by theCenter on International Cooperation at New York University, which is summarized by Gareth Porter in Counterpunch here.

Chuck Spinney
The Blaster

Phi Beta Iota: There are other reports of the Taliban approaching the US Department of State (including one approach to a CIA officer under cover). After 9/11 the Taliban resurfaced these offers, but asking only that Bin Laden receive a public trial. In every instance before and after 9/11 the US refused to consider the Taliban offers to turn over Bin Laden. One can only surmise that between them the CIA and the White House were quite content with the role Bin Laden was playing in AF, and that removing him would actually interfere with US plans for which Bin Laden was, like Lee Harvey Oswald, a “patsy” in the not-so-great game.