Ethics – Page 216 – Public Intelligence Blog

2013/02/082013/02/08

Owl: Naomi Wolf — JSOC Obama’s Secret Assasins

07 Other Atrocities, 09 Justice, 09 Terrorism, 10 Security, 11 Society, Corruption, Director of National Intelligence et al (IC), DoD, Ethics, Government, Idiocy, Ineptitude, IO Deeds of War, Military

JSoc: Obama's secret assassins

The president has a clandestine network targeting a ‘kill list' justified by secret laws. How is that different than a death squad?

The film Dirty Wars, which premiered at Sundance, can be viewed, as Amy Goodman sees it, as an important narrative of excesses in the global “war on terror”. It is also a record of something scary for those of us at home – and uncovers the biggest story, I would say, in our nation's contemporary history.

Though they wisely refrain from drawing inferences, Scahill and Rowley have uncovered the facts of a new unaccountable power in America and the world that has the potential to shape domestic and international events in an unprecedented way. The film tracks the Joint Special Operations Command (JSoc), a network of highly-trained, completely unaccountable US assassins, armed with ever-expanding “kill lists”. It was JSoc that ran the operation behind the Navy Seal team six that killed bin Laden.

Scahill and Rowley track this new model of US warfare that strikes at civilians and insurgents alike – in 70 countries. They interview former JSoc assassins, who are shell-shocked at how the “kill lists” they are given keep expanding, even as they eliminate more and more people.

Read full article.

Continue reading “Owl: Naomi Wolf — JSOC Obama's Secret Assasins”

2013/02/05

Steven Aftergood: Keeping Secrets from Congress — and Report on CIA’s Global (54 Country) Rendition and Torture Program

07 Other Atrocities, Corruption, Ethics, Government, IO Impotency

Keeping Secrets from Congress

When government information is classified or otherwise withheld from release, the possibility of government accountability to the public is undermined. But when the executive branch withholds crucial information from Congress, that may pose an even more fundamental challenge to democratic governance.

Read full article.

A Report on CIA Detention and Rendition Programs

In the absence of an official public account of post-9/11 U.S. counterterrorism programs, Americans (and others) must rely on unofficial accounts.

“Globalizing Torture” is a new report from the Open Society Justice Initiative, authored by Amrit Singh. It is said to provide “the most comprehensive account yet assembled of the human rights abuses associated with CIA secret detention and extraordinary rendition operations. It details for the first time what was done to the 136 known victims, and lists the 54 foreign governments that participated in these operations. It shows that responsibility for the abuses lies not only with the United States but with dozens of foreign governments that were complicit.”

It was reported in “Report Says 54 Countries Helped CIA After 9/11″ by Scott Shane, New York Times, February 4.

2013/02/052013/02/05

Tatiana Gulenkina — DC-Based Photographer for Hire — and Her Photos of the Inter-American Defense Board Conference on Regional Fault Lines (Code for OAS Down, CELAC Up)

Cultural Intelligence, Ethics, Military

TATIANA GULENKINA PHOTOGRAPHY

Inter-American Defense Board Conference on Regional Fault Lines (Photos)

Intelligence with Integrity Chapter 1: Public Governance & Public Intelligence — Funded by Michael Kearns of Colorado — Translate Full Text Online

21st Century Public Intelligence 3.1

2013/02/05

Theophillis Goodyear: Chomsky on Paranoia of the Superrich

Ethics

The Paranoia of the Superrich and Superpowerful

Noam Chomsky

Huffington Post, 4 February 2013

EXTRACT

Right after the assassination of Osama bin Laden, amid all the cheers and applause, there were a few critical comments questioning the legality of the act. Centuries ago, there used to be something called presumption of innocence. If you apprehend a suspect, he’s a suspect until proven guilty. He should be brought to trial. It’s a core part of American law. You can trace it back to Magna Carta. So there were a couple of voices saying maybe we shouldn’t throw out the whole basis of Anglo-American law. That led to a lot of very angry and infuriated reactions, but the most interesting ones were, as usual, on the left liberal end of the spectrum. Matthew Yglesias, a well-known and highly respected left liberal commentator, wrote an article in which he ridiculed these views. He said they’re “amazingly naive,” silly. Then he expressed the reason.

He said that “one of the main functions of the international institutional order is precisely to legitimate the use of deadly military force by western powers.” Of course, he didn’t mean Norway. He meant the United States. So the principle on which the international system is based is that the United States is entitled to use force at will. To talk about the United States violating international law or something like that is amazingly naive, completely silly. Incidentally, I was the target of those remarks, and I’m happy to confess my guilt. I do think that Magna Carta and international law are worth paying some attention to.

I merely mention that to illustrate that in the intellectual culture, even at what’s called the left liberal end of the political spectrum, the core principles haven’t changed very much. But the capacity to implement them has been sharply reduced. That’s why you get all this talk about American decline. Take a look at the year-end issue of Foreign Affairs, the main establishment journal. Its big front-page cover asks, in bold face, “Is America Over?” It’s a standard complaint of those who believe they should have everything. If you believe you should have everything and anything gets away from you, it’s a tragedy, the world is collapsing. So is America over? A long time ago we “lost” China, we’ve lost Southeast Asia, we’ve lost South America. Maybe we’ll lose the Middle East and North African countries. Is America over? It’s a kind of paranoia, but it’s the paranoia of the superrich and the superpowerful. If you don’t have everything, it’s a disaster.

Continue reading “Theophillis Goodyear: Chomsky on Paranoia of the Superrich”

2013/02/052013/02/05

Owl: Disposable Drones to Assassinate Military-Industrial Complex Leaders and Bankers at Home — Panic, Anyone?

09 Justice, Commerce, Corruption, Ethics, Military

A brief article Bring on the Drones! offers a wonderfully hopeful and positive view of open-sourced drone technology that will be available to the 99%.

Here's the key take-away quote from it:

“Imagine, if you will, a world in which drones are cheap and widely available. Then stop and think about the target profile of the Empire and the corporate interests it serves. Imagine how easy it would be to get targeting information on the homes, churches and country clubs of the senior management and directors of the aerospace companies that make American drones. The Boardrooms and C-Suites themselves. The factories. The whole South Asian chain of command, from CINC CENTCOM down to battalion and flight headquarters. The logistical tail of the drones, including the control centers at every airbase from which drones are staged. Begin to get the picture? Even as it is, the current American advantage in drones is just an outlier in the general trend toward cheap area-denial technologies (carrier-killing Sunburn missiles, mines, etc.). In fact the panic in U.S. ruling circles is so extreme that the latest U.S. Defense Guidance document was centered on the need to prevent the United States losing its regional power projection capabilities to such technologies — the 21st century equivalent of the most powerful army in the world being defeated by a guerrilla army using punji sticks and a bicycle-borne logistical tail.”

Targeting drones at the homes and country clubs of senior defense managers is similar to some plot elements of Daniel Suarez's remarkable novel about drones, which is highly recommended novel, Kill Decision

But why stop at defense executives? Why not add to the list the bankers, lawyers, corrupt politicians, bad cops. Open source drone technology will become the great “equalizer,” just as handguns were in the 19th century wild west and many other more recent contexts:

Bring on the Drones!

Continue reading “Owl: Disposable Drones to Assassinate Military-Industrial Complex Leaders and Bankers at Home — Panic, Anyone?”

2013/02/042013/02/04

SchwartzReport: Bees Make 70 of 90 Human Foods Possible — US Lost One Third of All Bee Colonies in 2012, While EU Striving to Protect Their Bees

01 Agriculture, 08 Wild Cards, Commerce, Corruption, Earth Intelligence, Ethics, Government

Although there is still great resistance as you can see in this report slowly, at least in Europe, the truth about the role of pesticides and herbicides in the decline of the bees is being recognized. Here in the U.S. nothing is happening, even as the collapse of bee colonies increases. About one-third of bee colonies was lost this last year. Of the 90 plant food stuffs humans eat 70 are utterly dependent on bee poll! ination.

EU Proposal to Protect Bees Stirs Hornets' Nest
DON MELVIN – The Associated Press

BRUSSELS – An attempt to protect Europe's bee population has kicked up a hornets' nest.

On Thursday, the EU's commissioner for health and consumer policy, Tonio Borg, proposed to restrict the use of three pesticides – called nenicotinoids – to crops to which bees are not attracted.

The three pesticides were clothianidin, imidacloprid and thiametoxam; the crops from which they would be banned include sunflowers, rapeseed, cotton and maize. The policy would take effect July 1 for the EU's 27 nations and be reviewed after two years.

But while environmentalists welcomed Borg's proposal as an important first step, Borg's spokesman, Frederic Vincent, confirmed that some countries reacted unenthusiastically, preferring further study to immediate action. He declined to identify them.

Marco Contiero of the environmental group Greenpeace said Britain was firmly opposed, and Germany and Spain were either opposed or wanted more time to consider.

Luis Morago of the advocacy group Avaaz, meanwhile, condemned what he called “spurious” British and German opposition and said 2.2 million people had signed an Internet petition calling for a comprehensive ban on the pesticides.

Beekeepers have reported an unusual decline in bees over the past decade, particularly in Western Europe, the European Food Safety Authority says. Bees are critically important to the environment, sustaining biodiversity by providing pollination for a wide range of crops and wild plants – including most of the food crops in Europe, it says.

Read full article.

2013/02/032013/02/04

Dolphin: Why Obama Picked Hagel — and the Rogue Elements in the Military (Including JCS)

Corruption, Ethics, Military

Wow. Read this at two levels — first off, an intelligent awareness that the Pentagon is out of touch with reality. But at a second level, “rogue elements” is why Admirals and Generals have been relieved, for planning false flag attacks, and why Obama has the FBI all over flag emails in the months leading up to the election. With all the stuff coming out about the “dual” chain of Command that Dick Cheney still influences with the Bushes in the background, and the rogue CIA, this is really fascinating.

Rogue Elements within US Military: Defense Nominee Hagel had warned Obama

Steve Watson

GlobalResearch, 3 February 2013

According to an account that Hagel later gave, and is reported here for the first time, he told Obama: “We are at a time where there is a new world order.

“We don’t control it. You must question everything, every assumption, everything they” — the military and diplomats — “tell you. Any assumption 10 years old is out of date. You need to question our role. You need to question the military. You need to question what are we using the military for.”

The Post states that Hagel warned Obama about becoming “bogged down” in the ongoing war in Afghanistan, saying it would define Obama’s first term. Hagel reportedly later privately questioned the wisdom of sending additional troops to join the conflict.

At the time, Obama had announced a proposed deployment of over 50,000 troops to Afghanistan, based on recommendations from the Pentagon.

In response, Hagel is said to have noted “The president has not had commander-in-chief control of the Pentagon since Bush senior was president.”

Read full article.

Why Obama picked Hagel

Bob Woodward

Washington Post, January 27

In the first months of the Obama presidency in 2009, Chuck Hagel, who had just finished two terms as a U.S. senator, went to the White House to visit with the friend he had made during the four years they overlapped in the Senate.

So, President Obama asked, what do you think about foreign policy and defense issues?

Continue reading “Dolphin: Why Obama Picked Hagel — and the Rogue Elements in the Military (Including JCS)”