Idiocy – Page 75 – Public Intelligence Blog

2013/11/082013/11/08

NIGHTWATCH: CIA Kills Peace in Pakistan, Saudi Goes Nuclear [with Chinese Help?]

02 China, 04 Inter-State Conflict, 07 Other Atrocities, 08 Proliferation, 08 Wild Cards, 10 Security, 11 Society, Cultural Intelligence, Government, Idiocy, IO Deeds of War, Officers Call, Peace Intelligence, Strategy

Pakistan-Pakistani Taliban: The Pakistani Taliban rejected peace talks with the government on Thursday after electing hardline militant Mullah Fazlullah as their new leader.

Earlier this month militant sources said that the consultative Shura council of the Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) chose Khan Said Mehsud known as Sajna as the new leader. But the election of Sajna, who leads the Pakistani Taliban in South Waziristan, reportedly was opposed by Taliban's other groups. Fazlullah was reported to have strongly objected to the choice of Sajna.

Shahidullah Shahid, the main spokesman for the TTP said talks with the government were a “waste of time” and the new chief Maulana Fazlullah was against them. “Holding of peace talks is not even an issue to discuss — this government has no authority, it is not a sovereign government, it is a slave, a slave of America. Holding peace talks is a waste of time.”

Fazlullah's men shot and wounded Malala Yousafzai last year, instantly turning Malala into a global hero for the education of girls.

Comment: Fazlullah's election does not necessarily mean that negotiations will never occur. Hardline leaders often are the only ones capable of negotiating with credibility. But that is for the future. Meanwhile, no peace talks are likely in the near term. Pakistani Pashtun savagery against Pashtun women will increase, including murder attempts against Malala in the UK.

Fazlullah's election signifies rejection of Prime Minister Sharif's peace overture. It also highlights a degenerative leadership pattern resulting from the US program of leadership decapitation. First, there is always someone waiting for the chance to be leader. Second, the new leaders are less experienced and wise than the men they replace. Third, the new generation of leaders is more extreme and theologically rigid than its predecessors. Finally, the new leaders tend to be unknown to intelligence relative to their predecessors. Decapitation is not a permanent solution to an insurgency or an uprising.

Continue reading “NIGHTWATCH: CIA Kills Peace in Pakistan, Saudi Goes Nuclear [with Chinese Help?]”

2013/11/052013/11/05

John Steiner: NSA Files Decoded

07 Other Atrocities, 09 Justice, 11 Society, Corruption, Cultural Intelligence, Director of National Intelligence et al (IC), DoD, Government, Idiocy, IO Deeds of War, IO Impotency, Military, Officers Call

From: Kevin Kelley <kwk@thehomegalaxy.com>
Date: Sat, 2 Nov 2013 10:31:11 -0700
Subject: NSA Files: Decoded – Truly Stunning! & ESSENTIAL! (From The Guardian)

This is truly stunning in many ways! Not in order:

It's stunningly beautiful as a graphic piece and typography
It's a stunning cutting edge of digital reporting converging interactive media
It stunning in it's brilliant and cogent making of it's case
It's stunning in the story it tells and conveys and in it's impact.

It is absolutely essential

NSA FILES: DECODED

What the revelations mean for you

A collection of videos, text snap-shots, and images, across many authoritative personalities. This is a MAJOR contribution to the public dialog about mass surveillance and out of control government agencies.

Baker, Stewart (former NSA general counsel)
Drake, Thomas (former senior executive, NSA)
Greenwald, Glenn (Journalist)
Jaffer, Jameel (Deputy legal director, ACLU)
Levison, Ladar (Founder of Lavabit)
Lofgren, Zoe (US congresswoman)
Scalhill, Jeremy (National security journalist)
Soghoian, Chris (Principal technologies, ACLU)
Stepanovich, Amie (Lawyer, Electronic Privacy Information Center)
Wyden, Ron (US senator)

2013/11/042013/11/04

Steve Aftergood: CIA’s Mind-Set of Misadventure & Impunity

Corruption, Government, Idiocy, Ineptitude

The CIA “Family Jewels,” Then and Now

EXTRACT:

In 1973, the Director of Central Intelligence ordered CIA officials to prepare a descriptive account of all CIA activities that were “outside the legislative charter of this Agency,” which is to say unauthorized or illegal. The purpose of the exercise was to identify operations that had “flap potential,” meaning that they could embarrass the Agency or embroil it in controversy.

The resulting 700-page CIA compendium of unlawful domestic surveillance, wiretapping, mail opening and detention actions became known as “the family jewels.” It helped to inform and to substantiate the investigations of intelligence in the 1970s. The document was finally declassified (with some redactions) in 2007 and was released to the National Security Archive, which has posted it here.

In a new book entitled The Family Jewels: The CIA, Secrecy, and Presidential Power (University of Texas Press, 2013), historian John Prados reviews the origins and consequences of the family jewels document and the operations described in it.

The thrust of Prados’ book is that the CIA family jewels are not simply relics of a discrete historical period, but rather that they are exemplars of a recurring pattern of intelligence misconduct. Many of the specific abuses of the 1970s, he argues, can be understood as archetypes that have been manifested repeatedly, up to the present day.

Intelligence Collection and the Rule of Law

EXTRACT:

As DNI James Clapper said at a hearing of the House Intelligence Committee last week, “there are many things we do in intelligence that, if revealed, would have the potential for all kinds of blowback…. the conduct of intelligence is premised on the notion that we can do it secretly and we don’t count on it being revealed in the newspaper.”

“The intelligence community must acknowledge how difficult it is to keep secrets today,” said ODNI General Counsel Robert Litt in a speech last week.

Establish “No Spy Zones”? Current Law Could Make It Hard

EXTRACT:

The notion of creating and incrementally expanding “no spy” zones has some history. In a 1996 op-ed, for example, former U.S. Ambassador Robert E. White proposed that the U.S. explore the possibility on a trial basis:

“One reform might be to select a specific region of the world — for example, Central America — as a testing place. Withdraw all CIA staff from these countries. Let the National Security Council charge our career diplomats with fulfilling Washington’s intelligence requirements. Should Foreign Service officers prove capable of meeting all intelligence needs, then gradually extend this beneficial practice to other countries through pacts of reciprocal restraint by which signatories agree not to spy on or engage in covert action against the other. In order to be eligible to sign such a pact with the United States, the other nation would have to meet minimal standards of openness.” (“Call Off The Spies,” Washington Post, February 7, 1996).

Continue reading “Steve Aftergood: CIA's Mind-Set of Misadventure & Impunity”

2013/11/022013/11/02

Marcus Aurelius: Gala for CINCSOC Brings Out Many Failures

07 Other Atrocities, 10 Transnational Crime, 11 Society, Corruption, Cultural Intelligence, Director of National Intelligence et al (IC), Government, Idiocy, Ineptitude, IO Deeds of War, IO Impotency, Officers Call

Without comment. PBI should assign appropriate headline.

Washington’s Intelligence Community Comes Out For a Gala “Spy” Prom

The annual OSS Society Donovan Award dinner honored Adm. William H. McRaven

By Carol Ross Joynt

Washingtonian “Capital Comment,” 28 October 2013

No one in the ballroom came right out and shouted, “William McRaven for elected office!” but the idea hovered like a thought bubble over the OSS Society’s William J. Donovan Award Dinner Saturday night, where the commander of US Special Operations was honored—including by President Obama—and even sounded himself a bit like a candidate.

US special operations commander, Adm. William H. McRaven, greets guests at the annual OSS Society dinner, where he was honored with the William J. Donovan Award. Photograph by Carol Ross Joynt.

The annual celebration commemorating the World War II spy agency and predecessor of the CIA—for the intelligence and special operations communities, it’s the prom and the Oscars wrapped in one—is a time for reminiscing and gossiping for both the smooth-skinned, ramrod-spined young operatives and the retired spies and warriors with more medals than hair or teeth. But McRaven, the Navy admiral who oversaw the 2011 Navy SEAL mission that resulted in the death of Osama bin Laden and who received the Donovan award, gave this year’s gathering a political edge.

President Obama addressed the audience and the honoree via taped video, his image filling three ceiling-high screens. He called McRaven “one of the finest special operators our nation has ever produced. Few Americans will ever see what you do, but every American is safer because of your service.” Also lauding him in taped messages were two other individuals who were directly involved in the bin Laden mission, former CIA director Leon Panetta and Defense Secretary Robert Gates.

A third official who was a player in that historic episode, John Brennan, now director of Central Intelligence, relived the experience in his remarks. He said the deliberations to undertake the mission were “difficult and fraught with uncertainty.” He said there was “a key moment in those deliberations when President Obama seemed to move a step closer to his final decision. It was when Adm. McRaven looked at the President and said, ‘Sir, we can get this job done.’ You could hear a pin drop. It was at that time that everyone in that room knew the decision was made and we were going forward.”

Continue reading “Marcus Aurelius: Gala for CINCSOC Brings Out Many Failures”

2013/10/31

Owl: Sovietizing the Internet and TV

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

Sovietizing the Internet and TV

In connecting the dots, it is evident this remarkable development can only be be a direct consequence of the Powers that Be nervously noticing a significant and on-going abandonment by the populace of corporate controlled, that is, “mainstream” media, in favor of alternative media. Outside of an especially bad false flag attack, it will be in this particular arena – of controlling Internet media – where the bloody fangs of US fascism will first become evident to everyone, even the most sleepy, uninformed and ignorant Americans, which there are very many.

“The Federal Communications Commission will facilitate the government’s prospective sovietization of private sector media with its “Multi-Market Study of Critical Information Needs,” a survey planned for a field test roll-out in 2014, according to a story posted on The Daily Caller today. The FCC will “collect a remarkably wide range of information on demographics, point of view, news topic selection, management style and other factors in news organizations both in and out of the FCC’s traditional purview,” writes Tim Cavanaugh. “The airwaves regulator would also subject news producers in all media to invasive questioning about their work and content,” a move on a collision course with the First Amendment.

A document prepared by Social Solutions International enumerates the highly intrusive nature of the proposed questioning, including grilling station owners on their political philosophies and asking reporters if proposed stories were rejected by management. “In this study, the FCC will delve into the editorial discretion of newspapers, web sites and radio and TV stations,” Hudson Institute Fellow Robert McDowell, who served as an FCC commissioner from 2009 to 2013, told The Daily Caller. “This starts sticking the government’s nose into what has traditionally been privileged and protected ground. Regardless of one’s political stripes, one should be concerned.”

More:
FCC Prepares Fairness Doctrine for the Internet

2013/10/31

Rickard Falkvinge: NSA on Merkle – Terrorist or Pedophile?

04 Inter-State Conflict, 07 Other Atrocities, 08 Proliferation, 08 Wild Cards, 09 Justice, 10 Security, 11 Society, Corruption, Cultural Intelligence, Government, Idiocy, IO Deeds of War, Military, Officers Call

So Was Angela Merkel A Terrorist Or A Pedophile?

Posted: 30 Oct 2013 04:10 AM PDT

Civil Liberties: The news that Angela Merkel’s phone has been wiretapped by the USA exposes the biggest wiretapping lie ever – that mass surveillance is targeted at catching terrorists and pedophiles. The German Chancellor is rightfully furious, and she should be furious on behalf of her citizens, too. Mass surveillance was never about terrorists or pedophiles: it is a tool of pure and raw domination.

With the exposure of German Chancellor Merkel’s phone being wiretapped by the US surveillance agencies, the mass surveillance has received yet another spotlight. This is welcome as it intensifies the discussion on civil liberties and the freedoms of speech, assembly, opinion, and the press – and how these freedoms need to carry over into the online environment.

To some extent, it is sad that it takes a personal insult against a leading politicians for something as grave as a threat to democracy itself to come to light, but still, here we are. The mass surveillance has been rolled out en masse without much protest, due to leading politicians smoothing over any worries by using worse scarewords, a common tactic.

We have frequently and repeatably been told that mass surveillance and wiretapping is necessary to “catch terrorists”. Pedophiles are also mentioned from time to time. This is a complete and utter lie.

Continue reading “Rickard Falkvinge: NSA on Merkle – Terrorist or Pedophile?”

2013/10/292013/10/29

SchwartzReport: Fukushima Fries the West Coast 28 Ways — US Map & Links — Deeply Frightening, Pity There Is No One Attending to the Public Interest….

03 Economy, 03 Environmental Degradation, 07 Health, 07 Other Atrocities, 08 Proliferation, 08 Wild Cards, 11 Society, Academia, Civil Society, Commerce, Corruption, Earth Intelligence, Government, Idiocy, Ineptitude, Lessons, Media, Officers Call

This is the latest on Fukushima and the impact it is making on the U.S. West Coast. This directly affects me, as well as tens of millions of other Americans, and there doesn't seem to be a thing we can do about it.

28 Signs That The West Coast Is Being Absolutely Fried With Nuclear Radiation From Fukushima
MICHAEL SNYDER – Global Research – Centre for Research and Globilization

The map below comes from the Nuclear Emergency Tracking Center. It shows that radiation levels at radiation monitoring stations all over the country are elevated. As you will notice, this is particularly true along the west coast of the United States.

Every single day, 300 tons of radioactive water from Fukushima enters the Pacific Ocean. That means that the total amouont of radioactive material released from Fukushima is constantly increasing, and it is steadily building up in our food chain. Ultimately, all of this nuclear radiation will outlive all of us by a very wide margin. They are saying that it could take up to 40 years to clean up the Fukushima disaster, and meanwhile countless innocent people will develop cancer and other health problems as a result of exposure to high levels of nuclear radiation. We are talking about a nuclear disaster that is absolutely unprecedented, and it is constantly getting worse. The following are 28 signs that the west coast of North America is being absolutely fried with nuclear radiation from Fukushima.

Continue reading “SchwartzReport: Fukushima Fries the West Coast 28 Ways — US Map & Links — Deeply Frightening, Pity There Is No One Attending to the Public Interest….”