Corruption – Page 825 – Public Intelligence Blog

A never ending goat rope!

By Jeff Stein

The ghost of the 1979 Iranian revolution is very much on the minds of veteran intelligence officials as Egypt explodes in street protests.

Most historians agree that the CIA was largely in the dark when anti-American students, radical Islamists and mullahs ignited street protests in Tehran because the U.S.-backed shah had forbidden the CIA to have contact with opposition groups.

Read the rest of this empty article….

Phi Beta Iota: Stein is a low-rent version of Ignatius, and most of his sources rarely have anything substantive to contribute. This is puffery. CIA is in the liaison business, not the espionage or the analytics business. The Safari Club (the fifth CIA that does rendition and torture) is built around Egyptian intelligence officers whose idea of a good time is sodomizing drugged kids and taking photos to turn the kids against their fathers. Not only is CIA worthless in Egypt and across the region, but the minute they are asked to do something they will out-source it because they have no internal bench–indeed, the place looks like a geriatric ward now, with annuitants all over the place.

2011/01/292011/01/29

Shihab Rattansi lays bare US hypocrisy on Egypt

07 Other Atrocities, Advanced Cyber/IO, Collaboration Zones, Communities of Practice, Corruption, Officers Call

editor spinney time — Chuck Spinney Recommends...

The 7 minute video at the link below is painfully embarrassing to watch, but it is quite revealing with regard to the dysfunctionality of our foreign policy and the state of decay in the U.S. mainstream media. Chuck

http://pulsemedia.org/2011/01/27/shihab-rattansi-lays-bare-us-hypocrisy-on-egypt/

Al Jazeera International is head and shoulders above all competitors in the MSM and Shihab Rattansi is by far the best news anchor currently on air. There is much journalists could learn from him. In the following interview with PJ Crowley watch Rattansi straitjacket the usually slick US State Department spokesman with relentless questions about the difference in US responses to Tunisia and Egypt and the applicability of pronouncements made in one instance to the other. Crowley appears disappointed that Rattansi is unwilling to abide by the convention of Western MSM which requires a newsman to take an evasion as a cue for moving on to a different subject.

See Also:

Reference: Empire of Lies & Secrecy

Reference: Lying is Not Patriotic–Ron Paul

2011/01/292011/01/29

Revolution & Secession: The Game is ON!

08 Wild Cards, Advanced Cyber/IO, Civil Society, Collective Intelligence, Collective Intelligence, Corruption, Counter-Oppression/Counter-Dictatorship Practices, Cultural Intelligence, Ethics, Government, InfoOps (IO), Intelligence (government), Military, Money, Banks & Concentrated Wealth, Officers Call, Peace Intelligence, Policies, Threats

NIGHTWATCH Complete Report for 28 January 2011

Jordan: Protesters across Jordan called for the government to step down. In Amman, more than 5,000 marched. Demonstrators chanted anti-government slogans, blamed the government for rising prices and called for the resignation of Prime Minister Samir Rifai.

Egypt: Today was the Day of Rage and so it has been. Roughly an hour after Friday prayers, the demonstrations began in Cairo, Suez and Alexandria, then spread and continued into the night. Buildings were set alight; curfews ignored and the Army moved in. The night closed with President Mubarak's mildly concessional speech which promises to incite the protesters, more than placate them. Expect more confrontations on 29 January.

Special comment: Background. Research and analysis of more than 50 internal instability episodes since 1980, NightWatch has tracked order in what appears to be chaotic security situations. Once internal discontent metamorphoses into a breakdown of public order, the government begins searching for a set of responses that will halt the decline in its fortunes. A government will follow a three-phase cycle in applying different ideas and resources alternately to placate or crush an insurrection or to buy time to try to find “a line it can hold.” That phrase refers to a set of actions over an expanse of national territory that will stabilize internal conditions.

If the government finds a set of responses that match the protestors' grievances, the downward cycle can be halted. If not, it will continue until the government falls or is changed, usually by the Army, the ultimate guardians of the state.

Below the line: complete NightWatch analytics, followed by comment on Davies J-Curve and Power of the Powerless.

Continue reading “Revolution & Secession: The Game is ON!”

2011/01/282011/01/29

Stronger Signals: REVOLUTION…

07 Other Atrocities, 08 Wild Cards, Communities of Practice, Corruption, Cultural Intelligence, Ethics, Peace Intelligence

Al-Jazeera's Revolution?

For all the talk about hashtags and Facebook, al-Jazeera is the primary vector of this democratic infection. Most Tunisians first learned of the early protests in Sidi Bouzid from al-Jazeera. Egyptians watched the overthrow of Ben Ali on al-Jazeera. Al-Jazeera broadcast the Egyptian mass demonstrations to the Yemenis. Social media may be important pathways for secondary infection, but this is an al-Jazeera revolution.

‘We are witnessing today an Arab people's revolution'

Today's Arab revolution is no less significant than those that preceded it in recent decades in Eastern Europe and Latin America. This time, Arabs are not being led by their leaders — from colonialism to pan-Arabism or Islamism or any other “ism” — as was the case in the past.

Propelled by the young and the digital revolution, citizens will demand nothing less than the right to choose and change their representatives in the future.

Continue reading “Stronger Signals: REVOLUTION…”

2011/01/282011/01/31

Egyptian Protests Live Video (Al Jazeera) / “Revolution-in-Progress”

08 Wild Cards, 11 Society, Civil Society, Corruption, Government, Law Enforcement, Media, Military, Videos/Movies/Documentaries

Comment: Kuwait gov paying citizens money and food mentioned during the broadcast as a move to pacify and prevent uprisings by Kuwait citizens.

Preconditions of Revolution in the USA Today

Continue reading “Egyptian Protests Live Video (Al Jazeera) / “Revolution-in-Progress””

2011/01/272011/01/27

Reference: NYT on WikiLeaks + RECAP

07 Other Atrocities, 09 Justice, Corruption, Cultural Intelligence, Government, Military, Peace Intelligence

Dealing With Assange and the Secrets He Spilled

By BILL KELLER

The New York Times, January 26, 2011

Bill Keller is the executive editor of The New York Times. This essay is adapted from his introduction to “Open Secrets: WikiLeaks, War and American Diplomacy: Complete and Expanded Coverage from The New York Times,” an ebook available for purchase at nytimes.com/opensecrets.

EXTRACT: The government surely cheapens secrecy by deploying it so promiscuously. According to the Pentagon, about 500,000 people have clearance to use the database from which the secret cables were pilfered. Weighing in on the WikiLeaks controversy in The Guardian, Max Frankel remarked that secrets shared with such a legion of “cleared” officials, including low-level army clerks, “are not secret.” Governments, he wrote, “must decide that the random rubber-stamping of millions of papers and computer files each year does not a security system make.”

Phi Beta Iota: Upgraded to a Reference because this nine part overview of the entire process is elegant, informative, and provocative. A very fine contribution of lasting value.

2011/01/27

WikiLeaks Mindset Growing Far & Wide

Civil Society, Corruption, Ethics, Government, Media, Military, Open Government, Secrecy & Politics of Secrecy

(text fr newsletter)
Get used to the WikiLeaks mindset
“The hacker generation is now employed by government, the military and corporate America, writes George Smith, a senior fellow at GlobalSecurity.org.”

Workforce: Get used to the WikiLeaks mindset

By George Smith
Jan 26, 2011

George Smith is a senior fellow at GlobalSecurity.org and a writer and commentator on the science and technology of national security.

Back in the early 1990s, I edited an electronic newsletter that dealt with the culture of amateur virus writers — hackers who wrote mobile malware. Julian Assange was a subscriber. This is only to illustrate Assange's bona fides as someone from the original world computer underground, a place where one of the driving philosophies was to reveal the secrets of institutional power.

Once confined to what was considered a computer geek fringe, that ideology is now entrenched. It's no longer an outsider mindset, and it hasn't been for a long time. Now it's inside, with its originators entering middle age. And younger adherents of the philosophy are coming along all the time.

They're everywhere — employed by government, the military and corporate America. And because we have come to the point that the United States is considered by some to be a bad global actor — whether you share that point of view or not — the government is faced with a problem it cannot solve. Its exposure is thought by many to be deserved.

Continue reading “WikiLeaks Mindset Growing Far & Wide”

Category: Corruption

CIA In Egypt: Silence of the Goats