Category: Officers Call

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Chuck Spinny: USA & Israel, Extrajudicial Killing

02 Diplomacy, 04 Inter-State Conflict, 05 Civil War, 07 Other Atrocities, 08 Wild Cards, 09 Justice, 10 Security, 11 Society, Corruption, Government, Officers Call
Chuck Spinney

Obama's kill list policy compels US support for Israeli attacks on Gaza

The US was once part of the international consensus against extra-judicial assassinations. Now it is a leader in that tactic.

Glenn Greenwald. guardian.co.uk, Thursday 15 November 2012 13.23 EST

Israel‘s escalating air attacks on Gaza follow the depressingly familiar pattern that shapes this conflict. Overwhelming Israeli force slaughters innocent Palestinians, including children, which is preceded (and followed) by far more limited rocket attacks into Israel which kill a much smaller number, rocket attacks which are triggered by various forms of Israeli provocations — all of which, most crucially, takes place in the context of Israel's 45-year-old brutal occupation of the Palestinians (and, despite a “withdrawal” of troops, that includes Gaza, over which Israel continues to exercise extensive dominion). The debates over these episodes then follow an equally familiar pattern, strictly adhering to a decades-old script that, by design at this point, goes nowhere.

Meanwhile, most US media outlets are petrified of straying too far from pro-Israel orthodoxies. Time's Middle East correspondent Rania Abouzeid noted this morning on Twitter the typical template: “Just read report in major US paper about Gaza/Israel that put Israeli dead in 1st sentence. Palestinian in 6th paragraph.” Or just consider the BBC's headline. Worse, this morning's New York Times editorial self-consciously drapes itself with pro-Israel caveats and completely ignores the extensive civilian deaths in Gaza before identifying this as one of the only flaws it could find with the lethal Israeli assault: “The action also threatens to divert attention from what Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has repeatedly described as Israel's biggest security threat: Iran's nuclear program.”

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John Robb: Global Economic Reset — And Surviving It

Communities of Practice, Officers Call, Policies, Resilience
John Robb

A Global Economic Reset? Don't Wait to Find Out. Build Something Better

By John Robb

Building a resilient life, home and community is its own reward.  It's simply the best way to live a good life.  However, there's also another reason to do it.  It's where the global system is headed, and the penalties for not starting early are steep.  To really understand this, here's a well-written and detailed report on how and why a collapse of our global financial and economic systems are likely to occur.

It's a new report called, “Trade Off” by David Korowicz.  Here's a quick summary:

  • The global financial and economic system is now a network. Everything is connected.
  • This system has become VERY big and VERY complex. It's simply beyond what government bureaucracies and markets were designed to manage/control.
  • Inevitably, as with all unstable systems that can't be manged/controlled, it will collapse. It will shrink to a size that can be managed through markets and bureaucracy.

As reports on this topic goes, it's very well written and provides quite a bit of conceptual detail.  However, as with ALL reports on this topic, it doesn't offer a solution.  Why? There simply isn't one available for the system as it is today. No fix. No patch. No tweak that will auto-magically fix our system's problems.  So, what happens when the global system resets? Nobody really knows, but….

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2012 Robert Steele: Addressing the Seven Sins of Foreign Policy — Why Defense, Not State, Is the Linch Pin for Global Engagement

03 Economy, 10 Security, 11 Society, Advanced Cyber/IO, DoD, Ethics, Future-Oriented, Government, Methods & Process, Military, Officers Call, Peace Intelligence, Reform, Strategy, Threats

Short Persistent URL: http://tinyurl.com/Kerry-Flournoy

John Kerry

I wrote this with John Kerry and Michele Flourney in mind, but regardless of who is eventually made Secretary of Defense, the core concept remains: the center of gravity for massive change in the US Government and in the nature of how the US Government ineracts with the rest of the world, lies within the Department of Defense, not the Department of State.

John Kerry, Global Engagement, and National Integrity

It troubles me that John Kerry is resisting going to Defense when he can do a thousand times more good there instead of sitting at State being, as Madeline Albright so famously put it, a “gerbil on a wheel.”  Defense is the center of gravity for the second Obama Administration, and the one place where John Kerry can truly make a difference.  Appoint Michele Flournoy as Deputy and his obvious replacement down the road, and you have an almost instant substantive make-over of Defense.  Regardless of who ends up being confirmed, what follows is a gameplan for moving DoD away from decades of doing the wrong things righter, and toward a future of doing the right things affordably, scalably, and admirably.

Continue reading “2012 Robert Steele: Addressing the Seven Sins of Foreign Policy — Why Defense, Not State, Is the Linch Pin for Global Engagement”

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DefDog: Bimbo-Gate Covering Up CIA’s Continuing Use of Proxy Terrorists, Regime Change, and Triad of Drugs, Arms, and Money-Laundering

05 Civil War, 07 Other Atrocities, 08 Proliferation, 09 Terrorism, 10 Transnational Crime, Corruption, Government, Officers Call
DefDog

Open Season indeed.  A seismic shift appears to be occurring, and CIA is the new “best target.”  Below is s summary that represents the “worst-case” view of post Viet-Nam CIA.

The Petraeus Affair vs. the CIA’s Long Criminal History

By Julie Lévesque

Global Research, November 15, 2012

The Petraeus Affair has demonstrated yet again how a sex scandal story can be fed into the U.S. media to serve both as a “political assassination” and as the tree hiding the forest. Even though what lies behind the salacious smoke screen is still the object of speculation, most of those speculations are more credible than a simple extramarital affair.

One of the possible explanations of Petraeus’ departure is his stance on Israel which he saw as a liability to US interests in the Middle East:

The enduring hostilities between Israel and some of its neighbors present distinct challenges to our ability to advance our interests in the AOR [Area of Operations]. Israeli-Palestinian tensions often flare into violence and large-scale armed confrontations. The conflict foments anti-American sentiment, due to a perception of U.S. favoritism for Israel. Arab anger over the Palestinian question limits the strength and depth of U.S. partnerships with governments and peoples in the AOR and weakens the legitimacy of moderate regimes in the Arab world. Meanwhile, al-Qaeda and other militant groups exploit that anger to mobilize support. The conflict also gives Iran influence in the Arab world through its clients, Lebanese Hizballah and Hamas. (Ali Abunimah, When Former CIA Chief David Petraeus Enraged the Israel Lobby, Electronic Intifada, November 12, 2012.)

As Stephen Lendman observes, sex scandals don’t necessarily lead to resignations unless state secrets are at stake:

Continue reading “DefDog: Bimbo-Gate Covering Up CIA's Continuing Use of Proxy Terrorists, Regime Change, and Triad of Drugs, Arms, and Money-Laundering”

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Mini-Me: Obama Fears of Coup Put FBI Into Emails of Multiple Flag Officers? How Many Walking the Plank?

Corruption, Ethics, Government, Law Enforcement, Military, Officers Call
Who? Mini-Me?

Huh?

Phi Beta Iota:  Sorcha Fall is a discredited source still read in Europe that has a gift for connecting dots in strange ways that often make real sense.  We do not believe that a coup was planned or that there was a serious plan to assassinate Romney and slip Petraeus in at the last minute.  We do believe that across the senior ranks, both uniformed and civilian, there are such strong senses of entitlement, hubris, and immunity from accountability, such that the legitimacy and authority of the President and his designated senior civilian defense leader, have been called into question publicly and in a manner clearly prejudicial to good order and discipline.  The US lacks a strong counterintelligence capability, but the one thing that could explain both the many officers being relieved, retired, or otherwise placed out of service, and the FBI's rather wide-ranging inspection of the emails of many flag officers, would be a legitimate concern on the part of the President that his military commanders could not be trusted. We also have the earlier case of US Navy Admirals, first Admiral Cosgriff and then Admiral Charles Gaouette, the first reported to be planning a false flag attack on Iran, the second relieved of command before he got past Guam enroute to Straits of Hormuz.  Something is going on.  It is not about bimbos but it will in passing flush the flags with personal indiscretions, as well as those who may be considered out of control or disloyal to a degree that mandates their relief or retirement.

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Eagle: Department of Justice Defendes Controversial Unlimited Military Detention

05 Civil War, 07 Other Atrocities, 09 Justice, 11 Society, Corruption, Government, Idiocy, IO Deeds of War, Law Enforcement, Military, Officers Call
300 Million Talons…

DOJ Defends Controversial Military Detention Provision

As presidential election returns rolled in Tuesday night, the U.S. Justice Department filed its opening brief defending a controversial military detention provision that a trial judge in Manhattan declared unconstitutional earlier this year.

The suit, filed in Manhattan federal district court by a group of journalists and activists, challenges a section of the National Defense Authorization Act that DOJ lawyers said reaffirms presidential detention authority under the Authorization for Use of Military Force, or AUMF. That authorization was passed in response to the Sept. 11 terror attacks.

Government lawyers said in the papers filed last night in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit that the plaintiffs “are in no danger whatsoever of being subject to capture and detention by the U.S. military.” The provision in question allows the detention of people who “substantially supported” al-Qaeda or “associated forces.”

“The district court nonetheless issued an extraordinary and sweeping injunction at their behest,” DOJ lawyer August Flentje of the Civil Division said in the brief filed last night. Flentje said the trial judge, Katherine Forrest of U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York, “entered a sweeping and permanent injunction against the president.”

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