Category: IO Deeds of War

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Chuck Spinney: No Freedom for Palestine Says Obama

02 Diplomacy, 04 Inter-State Conflict, 07 Other Atrocities, 08 Wild Cards, 11 Society, Corruption, Cultural Intelligence, Government, IO Deeds of War
Chuck Spinney
… My Cairo speech may have felt good, but I urge patience.  Please remember, I ‘lead from behind,' and so the steering wheel of my ship of state is not connected to its rudder. There is nothing I can or will do to change its course.  Hopefully, if the ship of state stays its own course, I might pass through a hole in the line of shoals in front of me (i.e., BiBi, Hillary, Congress, AIPAC, Rick Perry, the House Republicans, etc.), and then I will be able to lead from behind until 2016.

Published on Sunday, September 18, 2011 by EricMargolis.com

No Freedom for Palestine, Thunders Washington

by Eric Margolis

Could we see a great leap forward next week on the Palestinian’s long quest for statehood? Not quite. The Palestinian Authority (PA) says it will ask the United Nations General Assembly to upgrade from being a non-voting “observer entity” to an “observer state.” This bureaucratic-sounding change hardly seems earthshaking. The Vatican is an “observer state.”

But the earth is shaking. A majority of the world’s nations are fed up by the endless suffering of the stateless Palestinians and support creation of a Palestinian state on the West Bank and Gaza.

Turkey’s increasingly influential premier, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, went to Cairo last week and spoke for the world: “Let’s raise the Palestinian flag and let that flag be the symbol of peace and justice in the Middle East.”

The United States is desperately scrambling to head off a favorable vote in the UN. Washington threatens to veto any pro-Palestine vote in the Security Council – that alone can grant statehood status to a new state. The US is exerting huge pressure on allies and dependant states to vote against any resolution in the General Assembly.

Read full article.

Phi Beta Iota:  US “policy” on Israel (can do no wrong) and Palestine (let them eat dirt) is the single most compelling example of corrupt ideological idiocy, treason against the public interest both at home and abroad.  We all want Israel to be safe and prosperous–most us, the rabid and the corrupt not-withstanding–also want Palestine to be safe and prosperous, a contiguous state free from Israeli genocide and other atrocities.  As Chuck Spinney has noted in the past, the Middle East is a nuanced complex problem that demands intelligence and integrity applied in a holistic manner–the Israelis for example, are single-handedly stealing most of the water from the Arab aquifers for an agricultural “miracle” that produces 4%, at best, of the Israeli GDP.  This is nuts.  In Washington, “nuts” is policy.

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Chuck Spinney: Economic Costs of Warmongering

03 Economy, 04 Inter-State Conflict, 07 Other Atrocities, 09 Justice, 10 Security, 11 Society, Commerce, Commercial Intelligence, Corruption, Cultural Intelligence, DoD, Government, IO Deeds of War, Military, Peace Intelligence
Chuck Spinney

Below is a dynamite op-ed on the cost of the so-called war on terror by Linda Bilmes and Joseph Stiglitz.  Without being critical, I think at least two additional aspects to these costs make the picture even worse than they say.

1. Some people in this [let them eat] cake walk became — and are still becoming — filthy rich spending other people's money and spilling other people's blood — the acknowledgement of which takes one into the murky question of what moral values are shaping this political-economic meltdown.

2. While not directly caused by the war on terror, the ramping up of defense expenditures magnified the the rate of distorting spillovers (the Melman* effects) that the MICC's politicization of R&D and manufacturing have on diminishing America's overall commercial manufacturing efficiency and industrial competitiveness. The costs may be incalculable, but that does not make them less real.

* Professor Seymour Melman of Columbia University documented these effects in his voluminous writings, two of his most important books being The Permanent War Economy and Profits Without Production.

Los Angeles Times, September 18, 2011

America's Costly War Machine

Fighting the war on terror compromises the economy now and threatens it in the future.

 

By Linda J. Bilmes and Joseph E. Stiglitz

Ten years into the war on terror, the U.S. has largely succeeded in its attempts to destabilize Al Qaeda and eliminate its leaders. But the cost has been enormous, and our decisions about how to finance it have profoundly damaged the U.S. economy.

Many of these costs were unnecessary. We chose to fight in Iraq and Afghanistan with a small, all-volunteer force, and we supplemented the military presence with a heavy reliance on civilian contractors. These decisions not only placed enormous strain on the troops but dramatically pushed up costs. Recent congressional investigations have shown that roughly 1 of every 4 dollars spent on wartime contracting was wasted or misspent.

Read full article.

Phi Beta Iota:  We judge defense to be 75% fraud, waste, and abuse (3 out of 4 dollars, not 1 out of four).  The infantry is 4% of the force, suffers 80% of the casualties, and receives 1% of the budget.  Our starting position is that 20% of the Pentagon budget can be justified in conference, everything else is on  the table for draconian cuts toward a balanced budget.  Agriculture, energy, and health are documented at 50% waste–the Pentagon is much less relevant to the society and the economy than those three, ergo we speculate that defense is half again as wasteful as these other core sectors.

See Also:

Continue reading “Chuck Spinney: Economic Costs of Warmongering”

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Robert Steele: US Day of Rage = Electoral Reform & Integrity Plus General RECAP on Purple Public & Third Party Rising

03 Economy, 09 Justice, 11 Society, Civil Society, Collective Intelligence, Commerce, Corporations, Corruption, Cultural Intelligence, Government, IO Deeds of War, Law Enforcement, Misinformation & Propaganda, Money, Banks & Concentrated Wealth, Officers Call, Power Behind-the-Scenes/Special Interests, Threats
Robert David STEELE Vivas

I've been driving the 1964 MGB (my last remaining possession, it needs $5,000 of underbody work to survive the winter) around New England and am in New York now.  I've been following the US Day of Rage plans (they were also announced here) but have been surprised to find a number of normally intelligent middle-class men I have met along the way to be timid about the US Day of Rage movement.  They cannot get past the name and of course never get to the part about non-violent demands for electoral reform and integrity.

So here is my short brief on US Day of Rage, perhaps it can help get past these perceptual barriers.  I do recommend that US Day of Rage create an alternative web site, American for Electoral Integrity–kind of like the Silicon Valley Hackers Conference also calls itself the THINK Conference for the green eyeshade types without a clue.  I'll be attending this year, 4-6 November in San Francisco area.

MEMORANDUM

Subject:  US Day of Rage for the USA—Who, Why, What, When, Where, How

Date:  17 September 2011

IMPORTANCE:  Understanding the US Day of Rage is vital to understanding the deeper mood of the public.

1.  Who.  US Day of Rage is an informal, social network based movement that started as a protest against Wall Street with a planned occupation today, and rapidly morphed into a cross-country network of mini-demonstrations.  The “US Day of Rage” is being supported by internet groups who oppose corruption in the government such as Adbusters, Culture Jammers, and Anonymous. The original call to occupy Wall Street was put out by Adbusters, and the US Day of Rage and NYC General Assembly have since joined.

2.  Why.  Their capital demand is fair and free elections to overcome the special interest takeover of Congress and the Executive.  Please note that there is real convergence and resonance between the Day of Rage network and the Tea Party/Sarah Palin remonstrations against “crony capitalism.”

Continue reading “Robert Steele: US Day of Rage = Electoral Reform & Integrity Plus General RECAP on Purple Public & Third Party Rising”

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Winslow Wheeler: Super Committee Crashing & Burning

03 Economy, 07 Other Atrocities, 09 Justice, 10 Security, 11 Society, Commerce, Corporations, Corruption, DoD, Government, IO Deeds of War, Military, Misinformation & Propaganda, Money, Banks & Concentrated Wealth, Officers Call, Peace Intelligence, Power Behind-the-Scenes/Special Interests
Winslow Wheeler

Not only is the Super Committee headed straight for failure, the “automatic” cuts that would happen in the Pentagon budget are not going to occur.  To “save” the Pentagon budget from further cuts, it's doomsday for budget restraint in the short term.  The only thing to be elevated for the longer term and foreseeable future is our political and governmental dysfunction.

Why Pentagon bloat will kill real deficit cutting

Congress has taken a hostage that no one wants to shoot

EXTRACT:

It is not going to happen that way.

First, the supercommittee is bound to fail; it will reach no meaningful budget agreement.

Second, when the committee fails, the defense cuts envisioned by the supposedly automatic trigger mechanism will not occur. That will be for the simple reason that almost no one wants that to happen. While they are quite mistaken about the consequences, almost everyone on Capitol Hill (and in the Pentagon) thinks that those defense reductions will be “devastating,” “disastrous,” “doomsday” and any other apocalyptic term you can think of.

In short, the debt deal took a hostage that no one wants to shoot.

. . . . .

That “frozen” 2011 level will be more than twice the combined defense budgets of China, Russia, Iran, Syria, Cuba and Somalia. It will be more than $80 billion more than we spent, on average, during the Cold War when we faced a threatening and heavily armed Soviet Union and a hostile, dogmatically communist China. In the absence of these two huge threats, we are now being told we need to spend more.

Read full article.

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Owl: Is “Fast & Furious” a Deliberate Destabilization of Mexico by the US Government? Are US Military Arms Shipments to Guatemala the Other Side of the COIN?

04 Inter-State Conflict, 05 Civil War, 07 Other Atrocities, 10 Security, 10 Transnational Crime, 11 Society, Corruption, Government, IO Deeds of War, Law Enforcement, Military, Officers Call
Who? Who?

This item is from a very astute libertarian writer (he has a fantastic web site!), Justin Raimondo, and this column offers the best explanation or theory I have seen as to why BATF has given gazillions of guns to a Mexican drug cartel.  And it’s not due to government incompetence. A brilliant analysis, and oddly, I have not seen any mention of it elsewhere, so it very much deserves to be more widely distributed! This article should be the basis for a “60 Minutes” investigation…

Fast and Furious:  Blowback from Mexico

by , August 31, 2011

While the US military is being sent overseas in search of monsters to destroy, ignoring the good advice of the Founders, closer to home another war is brewing – right on the US-Mexican border. Border Patrol agent Brian A. Terry, killed on Dec. 21 near Rio Rico, Arizona, was murdered by drug cartel gunmen – using weapons smuggled across the US-Mexican border under the auspices of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms (BATF).

While the cartels shoot up half of Mexico, and terrorize the other half, it seems they’ve been getting a helping hand from those geniuses in Washington, whose “law enforcement” agencies knowingly allowed sophisticated firearms to be smuggled across the border, into Mexico. As BATF special agent John Dodson told the House Oversight Committee:

. . . . . .

With Mexico at the mercy of US-armed drug gangs, and the central government in Mexico City about to lose control, the introduction of US troops to “keep order” is entirely within the realm of possibility. In that case, the North American Union will become a reality, in fact if not in the formal sense – and the latter can be arranged quickly enough.

Read full analysis.

Commentary on DoD support to cartels below the line.

Continue reading “Owl: Is “Fast & Furious” a Deliberate Destabilization of Mexico by the US Government? Are US Military Arms Shipments to Guatemala the Other Side of the COIN?”

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Owl: Financial Terrorism in USA Against USA by Wall Street and 400 Specifically Named Most Wealthy

03 Economy, 04 Education, 05 Energy, 06 Family, 07 Health, 07 Other Atrocities, 09 Justice, 10 Transnational Crime, 11 Society, Blog Wisdom, Book Lists, Civil Society, Collective Intelligence, Commerce, Commercial Intelligence, Corporations, Corruption, Counter-Oppression/Counter-Dictatorship Practices, Cultural Intelligence, Government, IO Deeds of War, Law Enforcement, Money, Banks & Concentrated Wealth, Power Behind-the-Scenes/Special Interests, True Cost, Waste (materials, food, etc)
Who? Who?

EXCLUSIVE: Analysis of Financial Terrorism in America: Over 1 Million Deaths Annually, 62 Million People With Zero Net Worth, As the Economic Elite Make Off With $46 Trillion

Editor’s Note: The following report includes adapted excerpts from David DeGraw’s book, “The Road Through 2012: Revolution or World War III.”

Release Date: 9.28.11

Analysis of Financial Terrorism in America
By David DeGraw, AmpedStatus Report

EXTRACTS

The following report is a statistical analysis of the systemic economic attacks against the American people.

Currently, at least 62 million Americans, 20% of US households, have zero or negative net worth.

Recently, the National Academy of Science released their latest findings, backing up my claim by revealing that 52,765,000 Americans, 17.3% of the population, lived in poverty in 2009.

In 2005, 25.7 million Americans needed food stamps, currently 45.8 million people rely on them.

…counting the total number people in need of employment, you get a current unemployment rate of 22.5%, which is an all-time record total of 34 million people currently in need of work.

Continue reading “Owl: Financial Terrorism in USA Against USA by Wall Street and 400 Specifically Named Most Wealthy”

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Chuck Spinney: Israel Past Insanity & Into Suicide

04 Inter-State Conflict, 07 Other Atrocities, 08 Wild Cards, 10 Security, 11 Society, Corruption, Cultural Intelligence, Government, IO Deeds of War
Chuck Spinney

Netanyahu may be tough enough to cow President Obama, but to date, he has been afraid to reign in his fanatical Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman.  His plan to” weaken” Turkey described below in the Israeli outlet YnetNews suggests that time is running out.

One thing is clear from Lieberman's outrageous proposals to sow dissension in Turkey by supporting anti-Turkish claims of Armenians and Kurds: it will blow back to unify and harden Turkish attitudes.  Israel's opportunistic cynicism and lack of a moral center revealed by these proposals boggles the mind — this is particularly true of its flip flop on the recognizing the Armenian holocaust after decades of opposing such recognition on the grounds that it diminished the moral stature of Jewish holocaust.

But these proposals are more than outrageous; they set a new standard for self-referencing stupidity: The Turkish army, which has been one of Israel's best friends in Turkey, has been in a power struggle with PM Erdogan.  The army is fundamentally, however, a proud nationalist institution.  The army will have no choice but to side with Erdogan in this conflict with Israel.  This will increase Erdogan's and the ruling AKP party's political power and give him much more domestic support to tough it out with Israel.  And Erdogan is a little like Lieberman, in that he is a self-made tough guy who grew up in the back streets of Istanbul, but he is much smarter and is a true reformer to boot.

Moreover, setting aside personalities of individuals, Turkey, unlike Israel, is not a country burdened down with emotional baggage or a sense that the world owes it. Anyone with a modicum of understanding of Turkish culture knows that it is a proud, self confident culture, with its own sense of history.  It is not dependent on handouts from others and is dynamically expanding to the status of being regional power.  Finally, a strategy based on the idea that one should publicly back a Turkey into a corner and humiliate her national honor is without a doubt the stupidest way to deal with this proud country.

One can only conclude that a failure to dump Lieberman is a signal that Israel is losing its collective mind and a kind of self-righteous paranoia is displacing common sense in a nuclear armed country.  One has to wonder what extent Obama's pusillanimity in dealing with Netanyahu has contributed to this dangerous evolution.

Israel to ‘punish’ Turkey

Jerusalem fights back: Foreign Minister Lieberman formulates series of tough moves in response to Turkish steps; Israel to cooperate with Armenian lobby in US, may offer military aid to Kurdish rebels

Shimon Shiffer, Ynet News, 9 Sept 2011

Read article.

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Israeli pyromaniacs are setting the Mideast on fire

Autumn 2011 is teeming with disasters and our fate has been entrusted to a handful of cynical politicians, headed by Benjamin Netanyahu

By Gideon Lev, Ha’aretz, 8 Sept 2011

Read article.