Category: Officers Call

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Reference: Obama & Wall Street–Bloomberg Next?

03 Economy, 07 Other Atrocities, 09 Justice, 11 Society, Budgets & Funding, Commerce, Commercial Intelligence, Corporations, Corruption, Cultural Intelligence, Government, Misinformation & Propaganda, Money, Banks & Concentrated Wealth, Officers Call, Power Behind-the-Scenes/Special Interests, Secrecy & Politics of Secrecy
Chuck Spinney Sounds Off...

In my last Counterpunch essay, “How Obama's Initial Personnel Decisions Hardwired the Wipeout” I organized my argument around verbiage describing how Obama “fatal move” to the middle,” leaving the misleading impression that his connection to the middle occurred after the election.  This was sloppy wording and in retrospect it is clear to me that impression did not even reflect what I was trying to say. “Irrevocable” would have been a better modifier than “fatal.” And the word “move” was more related to the perceptions of the people whose enthusiasm he unleashed during the campaign, not Obama's political proclivities.

Obama has always been a center-right politician tightly connected to ruling oligarchs in the US.  I have been concerned about this connection with the oligarchy since December 2007, when I became aware of the people who were advising him on defense, foreign policy, and treasury matters. I publicly expressed concerns about his defense advisors in July 2008 and all of them on 5 November 2008, (see last paragraph here)  the day after he was elected.  “Hardwiring the Wipeout” was basically a first-cut bookend to the 5 November piece (what I called the outer layer of the onion).

Lest you think I am quibbling about what the meaning of “is” is, for the record, I agree with the critical comments (attached below) from my good friend Pierre Sprey, who has taken the trouble to give an incisive correction to my sloppy wording, and which he has graciously agreed to let me forward.  Think of this as a roadmap for probing into the second and more rancid layer of the onion.

——————————- [Sprey's Comment]————————

Pierre Sprey

Chuck,

Superb analysis of why the voters tossed out Bush and his cohorts, how Obama generated such strong support and, two years later, why many of those supporters felt betrayed enough to stay home or to vote Republican. The article is most certainly needed and timely to fend off the tsunami of obfuscation that both the Republican and Democratic pundits are about to unleash.

On the other hand, I view your chronology of Obama's (and the Democratic Party's) “move to the middle” a bit differently–and our differences have serious implications for judging Obama's character, his decision-making and the futility of expecting change in anything but his rhetoric:

1. I see no evidence that there's been any change or “move” in substantive actions and stated policies going from Senator Obama to Candidate Obama to President Obama. Needless to say, over this entire time most of his policy “positions” were (and are) rhetoric cleverly crafted to avoid any specific position at all.

2. Given that early financial backers of Obama in Chicago politics were the Crown family (General Dynamics and super-Zionists) and the Pritzker family (credit business, Goldman Sachs allies and super-Zionists), I'd say it's likely that Obama's commitment to the MICC, to Wall Street and to Israel predated his run for the Senate.

NOTE:  MICC:  Military-Industrial-Congressional Complex

Continue reading “Reference: Obama & Wall Street–Bloomberg Next?”

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Journal: TWO Tea Parties, Social Security, Coming Revolt

03 Economy, 07 Other Atrocities, 11 Society, Civil Society, Cultural Intelligence, Officers Call
Chuck Spinney Recommends...

Cape Job: Inside the Tea Party's OODA Loop (III)

The two previous blasters on this subject forwarded op-ed's that in effect described the strategic aim and strategies of the hidden hands that are fomenting right wing rage.  The grand strategic aim of these hidden hands is to lock in their vision of a neofascist New Normal political economy based on a foundation of a more unequal distribution of wealth cemented into place by a pattern of politics and propaganda that prey on the growing insecurities and fears of a diminishing middle class.

This op-ed (also attached below) by Frank Rich enriches the picture further by illuminating the same hologram with a slightly different, but equally valid laser. In the Pentagon, we would call Rich's description a grand tactical perspective of the Cape Job being perpetrated by the hidden hands.  These grand tactics are as old as war itself.  Sun Tzu called them Cheng and Ch'i, or in more modern parlance, the dazzle and stroke, or the direct and the indirect — hence the term cape job, which conjures an image of using the red cape to capture the attention of the raging bull to set it up for a skewering.  Essentially, cheng ch'i operations aim to manipulate the mind  (i.e., decision cycle or OODA loop) of one's adversaries (i.e., in this case the increasingly impoverished middle class) to direct their energies against themselves.  Rich's analysis fits that description to a tee.

Make no mistake about it, the grand tactics described by Rich are a definitive signature of a war, in this case a class war being waged by an elite oligarchy on the mass of of the people.  By its nature, it is a fight to the finish, unlikely to be conditioned by compromise or moderated by enlightened self interest, and in his last paragraph, Rich appears to sense this.  Cape jobs may begin insensibly, but if they do not end the conflict quickly, with the victors offering magnanimous terms, the intensity of the conflict builds and eventually the game becomes unavoidably obvious.  When that happens the cape job can sow the seeds of unpredictable blow back effects that mutate the form of and escalate the conflict beyond the control of the hidden hands stoking the cheng to stroke their victims — as it did for the German industrialists in the early 1930s (see Rich's last paragraph).

Chuck Spinney, Cagliari, Sardinia

Blaster I:   Journal: Tea Party “Booboisie”

Blaster II:   Journal: Tea Party Manipulated, Idle Angry Minds Being Exploited…

October 30, 2010

Frank Rich

The Grand Old Plot Against the Tea Party

By FRANK RICH   The New York Times

ONE dirty little secret of the 2010 election is that it won’t be a political tragedy for Democrats if a Tea Party icon like Sharron Angle or Joe Miller ends up in the United States Senate. Angle, now synonymous with racist ads sliming Hispanics, and Miller, already on record threatening a government shutdown, are fired up and ready to go as symbols of G.O.P. extremism for 2012 and beyond.

What’s not so secret is that some Republicans will be just as happy if some of these characters lose, and for the same reason.

Entire article below the line, provides deep insight into reality.

Continue reading “Journal: TWO Tea Parties, Social Security, Coming Revolt”

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Journal: AF BODY COUNT–$50 Million Per Body

04 Inter-State Conflict, 05 Civil War, 07 Other Atrocities, 08 Wild Cards, 09 Justice, 10 Security, 11 Society, Budgets & Funding, Corruption, Government, Military, Officers Call, Peace Intelligence, Power Behind-the-Scenes/Special Interests
Chuck Spinney Recommends
Its not like the disaster described below was not foreseeable.

Winning the War in Afghanistan at $50 Million per Kill

Fun With Arithmetic

By NICHOLAS C. ARGUIMBAU

CounterPunch 28/10/10

Michael Nasuti of Kabul Press recently published an article in which he calculated that killing each Taliban soldier in Afghanistan costs on average of $50 million to the US. The article, seemingly carefully. researched with all assumptions laid out so that anyone can examine them, is well worth reading. Nasuti, “Killing Each Taliban Soldier Costs $50 million.” He points out that at this rate, killing the entire Taliban forces (only 35,000) would cost $1.7 trillion, not a small amount for a country suffering from a severe economic downturn to spend on a war with no apparent purpose. And Nasuti's number, of course, assumes that they coud not be replaced faster than they are killed, but it appears that they can, easily.

Nasuti, who actually uses a “conservative” number (assuming that he has undercounted the number of Taliban casualties by one half), states that he had previously served “at a senior level” in the United States Air Force. He says,

The reason for these exorbitant costs is that United States has the world’s most mechanized, computerized, weaponized and synchronized military, not to mention the most pampered (at least at Forward Operating Bases). An estimated 150,000 civilian contractors support, protect, feed and cater to the American personnel in Afghanistan . . . The ponderous American war machine is a logistics nightmare and a maintenance train wreck.

Read rest of article…

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Journal: Pentagon Network Attacks–Cloud Truth?

10 Security, Computer/online security, IO Sense-Making, Military, Officers Call
DefDog Recommends...

Despite Scare Talk, Attacks on Pentagon Networks Drop

Listen to the generals speak, and you’d think the Pentagon’s networks were about to be overrun with worms and Trojans. But a draft federal report indicates that the number of “incidents of malicious cyber activity” in the Defense Department has actually decreased in 2010. It’s the first such decline since the turn of the millennium.
Click on Image to Enlarge

In the first six months of 2010, there were about 30,000 such incidents, according to statistics compiled by the U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission. Last year, there were more than 71,000. “If the rate of malicious activity from the first half of this year continues through the end of the year,” the commission notes in a draft report on China and the internet, “2010 could be the first year in a decade in which the quantity of logged events declines.”

The figures are in stark contrast to the sky-is-falling talk coming out of the Beltway.

“Over the past ten years, the frequency and sophistication of intrusions into U.S.military networks have increased exponentially,” Deputy Defense Secretary William Lynn wrote in a recent issue of Foreign Affairs.

Full Article Online….

See Also:

2010: OPINION–America’s Cyber Scam

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Officer’s Call: LinkedIn and Facebook

Information Operations (IO), Officers Call

Phi Beta Iota respectfully encourages all officers and staff non-commissioned officers to join LinkedIn and Facebook so as to enhance the sharing of information across boundaries.

The “secret” to surviving a security review is to avoid all personal expressions of opinion.  Use the systems to create networks of professionals with common interests (e.g. Information Operations) who can then post links that are seen by their network.  Provocative questions are different from opinions, and can be used to point out disconnects that might not be obvious.

Opinions are dangerous.  Although the security system has improved considerably, all the way from a reasonably clear security form [only foreigners with ties that bind] to reasonably coherent adjudication, the Industrial-Era security system is still not up to understanding the nuances of Information-Era information-sharing and sense-making.  “That should be classified” is the operative phrase for those who can do grave damage to careers without realizing that public intelligence has far surpassed secret intelligence in breadth and depth.

Bottom line:  you cannot grow as a professional without “jacking in” to the global grid, but opinions will have to wait for another five or six years.  Leave those for face to face conversations and be aware that your email is a legal record open for inspection whether you like it or not.

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NIGHTWATCH Extract: US, Venezuela, Libya…

02 Diplomacy, 03 Economy, 04 Education, 04 Inter-State Conflict, 07 Other Atrocities, 07 Venezuela, 08 Wild Cards, 09 Justice, 10 Security, 11 Society, Civil Society, Commerce, Commercial Intelligence, Cultural Intelligence, Earth Intelligence, Government, Law Enforcement, Military, Officers Call, Peace Intelligence

Venezuela- US: For the record. The Caracas government seized two factories owned by U.S.-based glass maker Owens Illinois, because it caused “environmental damage and exploited workers,” Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez said on 25 October. Today Venezuelan soldiers took possession of the factories.

Venezuela-Middle East: President Chavez said his government and Libya are creating a $1 billion joint investment fund to pay for projects the two countries will pursue together, according to a report by The Associated Press. Chavez also announced a $100 million joint fund with Syria, which will be used on projects such as aid in the construction of an oil refinery and to establish an olive oil processing plant.

NIGHTWATCH Comment: Chavez invariably goes out of his way to make questionable deals with countries that tend to have strained relations with the US. None of his new allies are in a position to help Venezuela in the event of trouble, which calls into question the wisdom of the investments, the utility of the associations and the soundness of Chavez' judgment.

NIGHTWATCH KGS Home

Phi Beta Iota: We beg to differ with our esteemed colleague.  The US is so over-extended in its elective wars and occupations of Afghanistan and Iraq as to call into question its ability to be effective anywhere else, including against Somali pirates.  Furthermore, the passing of time and the accumulation of public knowledge has a “truth” effect that may not lead to reconciliation but will lead to more and more expropriation of ill-gotten gains by predatory capitalists who in the past were able to call in the US Marines to enforce unethical, illegal, and unjust seizures of property.  Just as Australia is now getting serious about Native Title, so also is the rest of the Southern Hemisphere going to get serious about expropriating back into indigenous possession those lands acquired through illicit or unethical means.

The next President, and the next Director of National Intelligence (DNI), are going to have to lead a 180 degree change in how the US “does” intelligence.  Instead of producing 4% “at best,” the DNI is going to have to lead the integration of education, intelligence, and research so as to meet 96% “at worst” of the needs of the Nation in both restoring domestic prosperity and in achieving truth & reconciliation abroad.  Absent such a redirection, the US will not survive in its present form to 2025…in our always humble opinion.  This will require leaders with integrity who place the public interest foremost.

See Also:

Review: The Naked Capitalist

Review: War is a Racket–The Antiwar Classic by America’s Most Decorated Soldier

Review: Open Veins of Latin America–Five Centuries of the Pillage of a Continent

Review: SAVAGE CAPITALISM AND THE MYTH OF DEMOCRACY–Latin America in the Third Millennium

Review: Killing Hope–U.S. Military and C.I.A. Interventions Since World War II-Updated Through 2003

Review: Overthrow–America’s Century of Regime Change from Hawaii to Iraq (Hardcover)