Stephen E. Arnold: Russia (BRICS?) Firewalling the Internet

IO Deeds of War, IO Impotency
Stephen E. Arnold
Stephen E. Arnold

Russian Content: Tough to Search If Russia Is Not on the Internet

Forget running queries on Yandex.ru if Russia disconnects from the Internet. Sure, there may be workarounds, but these might invite some additional scrutiny. Why am I suggesting that some Russian content becomes unsearchable. Well, I believed the story “Russia to Be Disconnected from the Internet.” Isn’t Pravda a go to source for accurate, objective information?

The story asserts:

This is not a question of disconnecting Russia from the international network, yet, Russian operators will need to set up their equipment in a way to be able to disconnect the Russian Internet from the global network quickly in case of emergency, the newspaper wrote. As for the state of emergency, it goes about both military actions and large-scale riots in the country. In addition, the government reportedly discusses a possibility to empower the state with the function to administer domains. Currently this is a function of a public organization – the Coordination Center for the National Domain of the Internet. The purpose of the possible measure is not to isolate Russia from the outside world, but to protect the country, should the USA, for example, decide to disconnect Russia from the system of IP-addresses. It will be possible to avoid this threat, if Russia has a local regulator to distribute IP-addresses inside the country, rather than the ICANN, controlled by the United States government. This requires operators to set up “mirrors” that will be able to receive user requests and forward them to specific domain names.

Interesting. Who is being kept in the information closet? I suppose it depends on one’s point of view. Need an update for Sphinx Search? There will be a solution because some folks will plan ahead.

Stephen E Arnold, September 20, 2014

See Also:

BRICS Internet @ Phi Beta Iota

Patrick Cockburn: Letter from Arabia — ISIS is the Lesser of All Evils — And Most Certainly Less Evil Than an Invading Occupying USA…

02 Diplomacy, 04 Inter-State Conflict, 05 Civil War, 07 Other Atrocities, 08 Wild Cards, 11 Society, Corruption, Director of National Intelligence et al (IC), DoD, Government, Idiocy, Ineptitude, IO Deeds of War, Military, Officers Call, Peace Intelligence
Patrick Cockburn
Patrick Cockburn

The Impossible War

Isis cannot be beaten as long as there is civil war in Syria

BY PATRICK COCKBURN

CounterPunch • SEPTEMBER 11, 2014

A letter printed at the bottom of this article was emailed by a friend soon after her neighbourhood in Mosul was hit by Iraqi airforce bombers. This was some hours before President Barack Obama explained his plan to weaken and ultimately destroy Isis, which calls itself Islamic State, by a series of measures including air attacks. The letter illustrates graphically one of the most important reasons why American air power may be less effective than many imagine.

Continue reading “Patrick Cockburn: Letter from Arabia — ISIS is the Lesser of All Evils — And Most Certainly Less Evil Than an Invading Occupying USA…”

SchwartzReport: Why Obama Will Lose to ISIS — Indeed, How He Will Empower and Enlarge ISIS…

02 Diplomacy, 04 Inter-State Conflict, 05 Civil War, 07 Other Atrocities, 08 Wild Cards, 10 Security, Corruption, DoD, Government, Idiocy, IO Deeds of War, Military, Officers Call, Peace Intelligence
Stephan A. Schwartz
Stephan A. Schwartz

I started out today writing a short essay on my views about this new war, then came across this, with which I agree. It makes my main point: You would think after 11 years of war in the Islamic world, we would learn something about the culture and how to work with it. Apparently not. I think one really has to ask now: Cui bono? Who benefits?

Why Obama Will Lose His Endless War in Syria and Iraq
STEVE WEISSMAN – Reader Supported News

Never bet on another man’s game,” my father loved to say. It’s a lesson Barack Obama never learned, especially in his military strikes against Islamic State.

Islamic State, or ISIL, has only one way to keep the support of Iraq’s Sunni tribesmen and former Baathist supporters of Saddam Hussein. The blood-thirsty ‘fools of God” need to be seen defending their people against a Western invasion, which is precisely what Obama gives them.

He plays the role they purposely provoked with their brutal beheadings, summary executions, and sickening use of mass rape to keep their fighters happy. He becomes the foreign, Christian crusader defiling a Muslim land, and he does it in company with Iranian as well as Iraqi Shiites, whom Islamic State despises as heretics, and with the blessing of Sunni Arab leaders it correctly sees as outrageously corrupt.

In other words, the more jihadis Obama kills, the more Sunnis that Obama recruits to their ranks. Not a winning strategy.

Read full article.

Nafeez Ahmed: How the West Created the Islamic State (ISIS) — Jordan Hosts the Command Center — Chalabi and NeoCons Ride Again…

04 Inter-State Conflict, 05 Civil War, 07 Other Atrocities, 08 Wild Cards, 09 Terrorism, 10 Transnational Crime, Corruption, Government, Idiocy, IO Deeds of War, Military, Peace Intelligence
Nafeez Ahmed
Nafeez Ahmed

How the West Created the Islamic State

Follow the Money, Follow the Oil

Nafeez Ahmed

Counter-Punch, 12-14 September 2014

EXTRACTS

Missing from the chorus of outrage, however, has been any acknowledgement of the integral role of covert US and British regional military intelligence strategy in empowering and even directly sponsoring the very same virulent Islamist militants in Iraq, Syria and beyond, that went on to break away from al-Qaeda and form ‘ISIS’, the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria, or now simply, the Islamic State (IS).

. . . . . . .

In other words, US forces will pursue public legitimacy through conventional social welfare while simultaneously delegitimising local enemies by escalating intra-insurgent violence, knowing full-well that doing so will in turn escalate the number of innocent civilians “caught in the crossfire.” The idea is that violence covertly calibrated by US special operations will not only weaken enemies through in-fighting but turn the population against them.

Continue reading “Nafeez Ahmed: How the West Created the Islamic State (ISIS) — Jordan Hosts the Command Center — Chalabi and NeoCons Ride Again…”

Berto Jongman: Fake ISIS Beheading Videos — Blatant False Flag Fraud to Deceive the US Public — PBI Comment on War for the Soul of US Intelligence UPDATED: Bomb Syria or Control Ebola? Duh!

07 Other Atrocities, Corruption, Government, IO Deeds of War, Officers Call
Berto Jongman
Berto Jongman

Both beheading videos are questionable. Both were probably made by the same people following the same script and using the same format. I find it strange that the second video was distributed to subscribers of SITE before ISIS itself had the video made public. A SITE analyst had discovered the video on a filesharing site.

In both videos you don't see the actual beheadings which is uncommon for many other jihadi beheading video's. The two video's have become the trigger for the Obama speech in which he announced a new war. To me it is not clear at all why these two videos became ‘ trigger events' as there are execution video's almost on a weekly basis which are much more gruesome. Maybe it was because of the fact that the victims were allegedly well known US and Israel journalists. Phi Beta Iota posted the item by two US students showing how easy it is to produce a beheading video that looks quite genuine.

Continue reading “Berto Jongman: Fake ISIS Beheading Videos — Blatant False Flag Fraud to Deceive the US Public — PBI Comment on War for the Soul of US Intelligence UPDATED: Bomb Syria or Control Ebola? Duh!”

Steven Aftergood: US Intelligence Budget Data — PBI: Understated but on the Record

03 Economy, 04 Inter-State Conflict, 05 Civil War, 07 Other Atrocities, 09 Terrorism, 10 Security, 10 Transnational Crime, 11 Society, Corruption, Director of National Intelligence et al (IC), DoD, Government, Ineptitude, IO Deeds of War, IO Impotency, Military, Office of Management and Budget, Officers Call, Peace Intelligence
Steven Aftergood
Steven Aftergood

Intelligence Budget Data

On March 4, 2014, the Administration submitted its Fiscal Year 2015 budget request, including a base funding request of $45.6 billion for the National Intelligence Program (NIP), and a base funding request of $13.3 billion for the Military Intelligence Program (MIP). On June 30, the DNI submitted an updated FY2015 budget request of $49.4 billion for the NIP including funding for overseas contingency operations. An updated budget request figure for the MIP has not yet been disclosed.

Phi Beta Iota: We consider these figures to be severely deceptive and roughly 70% of the actual combined total budget for green and black intelligence capabilities that are secret, toxic, and a mix of benignly worthless (standing armies of ignorant analysts, collection that is not processed) and pathologically dangerous (drones, renditions, covert operations, subsidies to foreign intelligence services). Our best guess of the actual total US secret intelligence budget remains US$100 billion per year, inclusive of thousands of private sector “intelligence” capabilities (many of them “open source” and extremely mediocre) that are embedded within acquisition and other contracts, all out of control and of dubious value.

IC Budget Table Cropped
Click on Table to Enlarge

Click to access Office of the Director of National Intelligence Budget Justifications

Berto Jongman: Pfaff on US Doing Stupid Stuff in Ukraine Plus Chuck Spinney & Pat Buchanan on Bluster, Bluff, Corruption and More Stupidity in Estonia…

02 Diplomacy, 06 Russia, 08 Wild Cards, Corruption, Government, Idiocy, Ineptitude, IO Deeds of War, Officers Call, Peace Intelligence
Berto Jongman
Berto Jongman

Doing Stupid Stuff in the Ukraine

William Pfaff

EXTRACT

President Obama said not long ago that his foreign policy principle was “not doing stupid stuff.” At about the same time his State Department and CIA were conspicuously guiding and supporting a coup d'etat in Ukraine that was the exact contradiction to the Obama policy statement. The Ukrainian Parliament's first post-coup act was to pass a resolution outlawing the use of the Russian language in the Ukraine, which is the native language of more than a fifth of the population of a country that has always been intimately involved in the history, religion and culture of the Russian nation. Nothing could have been more stupid.

[Until Obama's next move…]

Read full post.

Chuck Spinney and Pat Buchanan below the fold.

Continue reading “Berto Jongman: Pfaff on US Doing Stupid Stuff in Ukraine Plus Chuck Spinney & Pat Buchanan on Bluster, Bluff, Corruption and More Stupidity in Estonia…”