The truth at any cost lowers all other costs — curated by former US spy Robert David Steele.
If you read my essay, A Sense of Proportion. (See: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/
‘Do Costs of Hunting Terrorists Exceed Benefits?'
Der Spiegel (Germany)
Phi Beta Iota:
See Also:
2012 PREPRINT Foreword to NATO Book on Public Intelligence for Public Health
Here is the final bit explaining the complete corruption of the financial sector; it deals with the debasing of the the rating agencies. It is blatantly obvious from many sources that the Obama Administration Justice Department has failed to serve the public interest. We are five years past the 2008 meltdown, and it cannot be denied that no real effort has been made at the Federal level to hold these corporations, or the men and w! omen who control them, accountable. Thus, I do not see how it is going to be possible to avoid another meltdown. The system is simply too corrupt, I think it is going to implode again because of its unregulated greed.
The Last Mystery of the Financial Crisis
MATT TAIBBI – Rolling Stone
EXTRACT:
Everything Is Rigged: The Biggest Price-Fixing Scandal Ever
Thanks to a mountain of evidence gathered for a pair of major lawsuits by the San Diego-based law firm Robbins Geller Rudman & Dowd, documents that for the most part have never been seen by the general public, we now know that the nation's two top ratings companies, Moody's and S&P, have for many years been shameless tools for the banks, willing to give just about anything a high rating in exchange for cash.
In incriminating e-mail after incriminating e-mail, executives and analysts from these companies are caught admitting their entire business model is crooked.
“Lord help our fucking scam . . . this has to be the stupidest place I have worked at,” writes one Standard & Poor's executive. “As you know, I had difficulties explaining ‘HOW' we got to those numbers since there is no science behind it,” confesses a high-ranking S&P analyst. “If we are just going to make it up in order to rate deals, then quants [quantitative analysts] are of precious little value,” complains another senior S&P man. “Let's hope we are all wealthy and retired by the time this house of card[s] falters,” ruminates one more.
Syria: Today Syrian Information Minister al-Zohbi replied to yesterday's rant by the Saudi Foreign Minister, Saud al Faisal. Al-Zohbi said, “The violence in Syria is being caused by Saudi arms, Saudi money and terrorists linked to Saudi Arabia.” He also said that Saud al Faisal had blood on his hands.
Syria's Al-Baath newspaper said al Faisal is “crazy” and that “Faisal's statements… prove not only that he has become senile and out of touch with reality, but that the Wahhabi regime is falling apart.”
Comment: The Syrian Minister did not blame the West for the uprising, curiously,
In Feedback a Brilliant and perceptive Reader pointed out that the fighting in Syria is about power and regional leadership as much as it is about sectarian dominance. The Baath government in Damascus is the proxy for Iran. Its survival advances Iran's claim to be the regional hegemon and is a major setback to Saudi Arabia's claim.
The Syrian opposition is the proxy for Saudi Arabia which is determined to resist Iranian inroads in the Arab world as much as it resists the spread of Shiite Islam. Saudi Arabia is making a major commitment in Syria to block Iran and stands to lose much clout if the Baathist regime in Damascus lasts.
The Turks attempted to make the leadership power struggle triangular, but the demonstrations seem to have helped undermine the Turkish bid.
Here is document, and below, the conclusion.
5. CONCLUSION
The phenomenon of the swing of Salafism/Wahhabism into terrorism is not monolithic, but is divided on the grounds of realities, historical context and local customs. Similarly, we must take into account the relatively low importance of boundaries between States that most often deal with various ethnic and religious ensembles.
The impact on the war in Afghanistan on the emergence of Salafist jihadism is a well-known phenomenon and it’s a safe bet that the current conflict in Northern Mali will have consequences on the entire Sahel. Not to mention, in the case of Mali, the weight of the “tradition” of Ghazi, the warrior who participate in an operation against “infidels” and thereby contribute to jihad and traffic of all kinds that marked Saharan nomads and semi-nomads.
Everybody play nice together while the bulk of already inadequate and dwindling resources are weighted to Navy and Air Force in the Pacific. [Oh, BTW, in separate Armed Forces Journal reporting, twp Army officers, a major general and a colonel, assert that former Chief of Naval Operations ADM (Ret) Gary Roughead and Hoover Institution analyst Kori Schake have recommended in a recent presentation at the Brookings Institution, that, “The active duty Army would be reduced by 200,000 soldiers from the 490,000 planned for the FY 2013 budget” to pay for it.
The Future Of Joint Operations
Real Cooperation for Real Threats
By Martin E. Dempsey
ForeignAffairs.com, June 20, 2013
Continue reading “Marcus Aurelius: The Future of Joint Operations”
Here’s How Edward Snowden Got ‘Top Secret’ Clearance
A Senate Homeland Security Subcommittee met Thursday afternoon to examine the government’s process for granting security clearance.
The purpose of the meeting was to figure out how someone like Edward Snowden, the NSA leaker, could get access to some of the most secret information in the country.
The subcommittee failed in that regard: Merton Miller, associate director of investigations at the Office of Personnel, said he had no information on Snowden’s specific case. OPM Inspector General Patrick McFarland said he did have information on Snowden, but couldn’t reveal it to the committee just yet.
That’s not to say that the committee lacked revelation. Six witnesses and three lawmakers revealed a security clearance system so broken that it would be comical if a 29-year-old wasn’t hiding in Hong Kong and leaking American secrets to the press.
That’s not to say that the committee lacked revelation. Six witnesses and three lawmakers revealed a security clearance system so broken that it would be comical if a 29-year-old wasn’t hiding in Hong Kong and to the press.
They include:
Continue reading “Berto Jongman: US Security Clearance System — Wildly Dysfunctional”
GCHQ taps fibre-optic cables for secret access to world's communications
Exclusive: British spy agency collects and stores vast quantities of global email messages, Facebook posts, internet histories and calls, and shares them with NSA, latest documents from Edward Snowden reveal
