Allen Roland: The Moon is Down in Afghanistan – Agony, Cognitive Dissonance, & Here in the USA 18 Veteran Suicides, Day After Day After Day…

Corruption, Ethics, Government, Hacking, IO Deeds of War, Military
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The Moon is Down in Afghanistan, Flies Have Conquered Flypaper

The continuation of attacks on US soldiers by uniformed Afghan soldiers and policemen is an expression of popular hatred for the occupation regime and military invasion forces which brings to mind John Steinbeck’s classic novel The Moon Is Down. Steinbeck fully captures the inner agony, shame and moral guilt of the German occupying forces in Norway whereas the flies eventually conquer the flypaper ~ as they most assuredly will in Afghanistan

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EXTRACT

The flies are beginning to conquer the flypaper in Afghanistan , as they did in Vietnam and Martin makes the same analogy ~ “There is a stench of decomposition over the whole US-NATO enterprise in Afghanistan. US troops are being drawn down, US equipment removed, US subsidies cut back, and the US collaborators in the Karzai regime are packing their bags—usually stuffed with cash—and checking their passports. Kabul today increasingly recalls Saigon in the final months and weeks before the collapse of the US-backed puppet regime of South Vietnam.”

Read full post with photos and video.

Robert David STEELE Vivas

ROBERT STEELE:  I personally communicated to Jim Clapper, then Undersecretary of Defense for Intelligence, the importance of understanding “cognitive dissonance” within the minds and souls of our dedicated military and civilian personnel.  There is a great deal more to the craft of intelligence than going through the motions pumping money and being complacent about policy, acquisition, and operations decisions that are at best insane and at worst criminally treasonous.  Now that I have an SSBI completed by OPM on 15 March 2012  I have applied for multiple positions at the 13-15 level and I am actively seeking righteous employment in the HUMINT/CI arena.  It's time we got serious about bringing US Intelligence into the 21st Century.  General Mike Flynn will fail — I have seen the plans — in two years when he moves on there will be a legacy of paper and not much else.  DHS and SOCOM are off the rails (based on open sources–we can only imagine what a full audit would reveal).  We appear to have the makings of a very expensive global to local inter-agency cluster fuss such as I have not seen since my tour in Panama.  Have brain (and integrity), will travel.

PS  Please do not hold it against me that retired foreign intelligence chiefs like what I do.  I am no longer in touch with them and I  believe their good opinion should be considered a feature not a flaw, assuming my views on the urgency of M4IS2 are eventually accepted as the foundation for a vastly more effective US IC.

Steele book profile 2012 Low Footprint

CV Robert David Steele 17 August 2012

Chuck Spinney: Smart Iranians, Neutral Americans, Fearful Jews, Idiot Zionists….

Corruption, Ethics, Government, Idiocy
Chuck Spinney

The hysteria coming out of Israel regarding the need to attack Iran raises a question  of whether or not Netanyahu is overplaying his hand.  Perhaps he is serious. Perhaps he is bluffing in the hope that he can squeeze a huge increase in the annual US aid budget to Israel; perhaps he thinks he can exert enough influence to tip the election in favor of  Romney.  But if he thinks he can force Obama and the United States into attacking Iran, he is playing a dangerous game that could easily backfire.  Mr. Obama is not rising to the bait.  Moreover, Netanyahu's odious attempt to manipulate the United States' election process borders on the obscene, and my guess is that Americans, especially independents, are beginning to notice.  Netanyahu may be setting himself (and Israel) up for a kind of blowback. Coincidentally or not, Romney's obsequious trip to Israel to harvest Jewish support at home was a public relations bust. Against this background, one wonders what the Iranians are making of this bluster and bombast.  Attached is an opinion piece written by an Iranian for the American Iranian Council, an organization dedicated to  improving US-Iranian relations.  CS

Will Israel attack Iran?

By Shahir ShahidSaless, American Iranian Council

By AIC News – Posted on August 17th, 2012

Israeli threats of an imminent attack against Iran make headlines almost daily. Israel’s media also reflect the latest developments in this respect in a significant fashion. According to Time, “the front pages of the four main Israeli dailies last Friday [August 10] reflected what appeared to be a concerted campaign to create the impression that Israel is preparing itself to start a hot war with Iran sometime over the next 12 weeks.” In an interview with Israeli TV, former Mossad chief Efraim Halevi also said if he were Iranian, he “would be very fearful of the next 12 weeks.”

Continue reading “Chuck Spinney: Smart Iranians, Neutral Americans, Fearful Jews, Idiot Zionists….”

Berto Jongman: Lisa Stamnitzky on Terrorism Research — Neither Scientific nor Legitimate

Academia, Commerce, Corruption, Cultural Intelligence, Government
Berto Jongman

Disciplining an Unruly Field: Terrorism Experts and Theories of Scientific/Intellectual Production

Lisa Stampnitzky

Qual Sociol DOI 10.1007/s11133-010-9187-4

Abstract

“Terrorism” has proved to be a highly problematic object of expertise. Terrorism studies fails to conform to the most common sociological notions of what a field of intellectual production ought to look like, and has been described by participants and observers alike as a failure. Yet the study of terrorism is a booming field, whether measured in terms of funding, publications, or numbers of aspiring experts. This paper aims to explain, first, the disjuncture between terrorism studies in practice and the sociological literature on fields of intellectual production, and, second, the reasons for experts’ “rhetoric of failure” about their field. I suggest that terrorism studies, rather than conforming to the notion of an ideal-typical profession, discipline, or bounded “intellectual field,” instead represents an interstitial space of knowledge production. I further argue that the “rhetoric of failure” can be understood as a strategy through which terrorism researchers mobilize sociological theories of scientific/cultural fields as both an interpretive resource in their attempts to make sense of the apparent oddness of their field and their situation, and as schemas, or models, in their attempts to reshape the field. I conclude that sociologists ought to expand our vision to incorporate the many arenas of expertise that occupy interstitial spaces, moving and travelling between multiple fields.

Keywords Terrorism . Experts . Knowledge . Boundary work

PDF (19 Pages) Terrorism Mob

Continue reading “Berto Jongman: Lisa Stamnitzky on Terrorism Research — Neither Scientific nor Legitimate”

Michel Bauwens: Michael Hudson on Fictitious Capitalism

03 Economy, Commerce, Corruption, Government
Michel Bauwens

Michael Hudson on Fictitious Capital « naked capitalism

Michael Hudson spoke with Max Keiser about what he calls “fictitious capital” which is essentially lending backed by inadequate capital, such as collateral that has fallen in value. This is an idea he has explored in his previous papers, such as “From Marx to Goldman Sachs” and now in his new book, The Bubble and Beyond.

Via Nicholas Ripley

Owl: Covert Plans for Banking Holiday – Move Your Money Now…

Commerce, Corruption, Economics/True Cost, Government, Knowledge
Who? Who?

Should the People Pull Their Money from the Banks While They Can?

“The biggest banks in the US have been given advisement by US regulators that they must make plans to stave off a complete financial collapse without relying on the US government. Bank of America, Goldman Sachs and other technocrats have secretly crafted worst-case scenarios in which they can continue to thrive during a full-blown domestic monetary crisis.”

This article offers many interesting items, including claims that the mega-banks have invested in DOD and security contractors such as DynCorp to protect the bankers when collapse comes, but the most interesting item comes from the end of this article, which talks about the real agenda to be implemented behind the new “Gauss” virus when its presence increases enough to significantly threaten the world banking system (my emphasis):

Continue reading “Owl: Covert Plans for Banking Holiday – Move Your Money Now…”

Mini-Me: The Screwed Election: Wall Street Can’t Lose, America Can’t Win

Civil Society, Corruption, Government
Who? Mini-Me?

Huh?

The Screwed Election: Wall Street Can’t Lose, and America Can’t Win

Joel Kotkin

The Daily Beast, 10 August 2012

Everyone hates the big banks—except the two candidates running for president. Joel Kotkin on the bipartisan triumph of crony capitalism.

About two in three Americans do not think what’s good for Wall Street is good for America, according to the 2012 Harris poll, but do think people who work there are less “honest and moral than other people,” and don’t “deserve to make the kind of money they earn.” Confidence in banks is at a record low, according to Gallup, as they’ve suffered the steepest fall in esteem of any American institution over the past decade. And people have put their money where their mouth is, with $171 billion leaving the stock market last year alone, and 80 percent of Wall Street communications executives conceded that public perception of their firms was not good.

Americans are angry at the big-time bankers and brokers, and yet, far from a populist attack on crony capitalism, Wall Street is sitting pretty, looking ahead to a presidential election that it can’t possibly lose. They have bankrolled a nifty choice between President Obama, the largest beneficiary of financial-industry backing in history and Mitt Romney, one of their very own.

One is to the manner born, the other a crafty servant; neither will take on the power.

Read full article with photos.

Continue reading “Mini-Me: The Screwed Election: Wall Street Can’t Lose, America Can’t Win”

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