A European Transgovernmental Intelligence Network and the Role of IntCen
Mai'a K. Davis Crossa
ARENA Centre for European Studies, University of Oslo, Norway
Published online: 27 Sep 2013.
ABSTRACT This article makes the case that the most important developments in the European intelligence arena actually have little to do with member states’ willingness to cooperate. Rather, the context for the intelligence profession has changed fundamentally in the past few years in light of globalization and the information revolution, and this has made the creation of a single EU intelligence space far more likely, even despite member states’ resistance. The author argues that the emerging European intelligence space is increasingly consolidating around a transgovernmental network of intelligence professionals that draw upon open-source knowledge acquisition, with IntCen at its centre. One implication of this is that the field of EU intelligence may be a rare example in which integration can be achieved before cooperation, rather than the latter serving as a stepping-stone to the former.
Groups Call on Congress to Make Massive Cuts in Runaway Military Spending
A diverse array of organizations today launched a campaign to enact major cuts in wasteful military spending, as part of the December 13 federal budget resolution. The groups include peace, human service, economic and environmental justice organizations, food sovereignty and green energy groups, and grassroots community organizations. They are calling for long overdue reductions in military spending in order to meet dire needs at home and reinvest in our future.
The groups are launching a sign-on letter calling for cuts of 25-50% in the trillion dollar military budget that accounts for 53% of all discretionary federal spending. The groups will deliver the letter to Congress on December 10 – International Human Rights Day.
The groups want Congress to focus on:
– Adequately funding critical social needs, including food stamps, Social Security, improved and expanded Medicare for all, and public education including college,
– Creating a full employment public jobs program to jump start the green economy (a Green New Deal),
A Funeral Notice for Osama bin Laden was published on December 26, 2001, in the Egyptian newspaper al-Ward. An English translation is provided below. Anyone fluent in Arabic is invited to verify or correct the translation. This item was sent to me from a reader abroad.
Also below are is a CNN interview with its medical correspondent who examines the last non-faked video of bin Laden and concludes that bin Laden is seriously ill.
There is also below a 2002 report that Israeli intelligence has concluded that bin Laden is dead.
I cannot attest to the correctness of any of these reports, but it is unclear why there would be so much disinformation from such varied sources about bin Laden’s condition or what purpose is served.
You can use this information to evaluate the Obama regime’s unsubstantiated claim that Navy SEALs killed bin Laden in Pakistan a decade later.
Boris Artzybasheff's anthropomorphic illustrations are surreal and often bordering on the grotesque. But as I look at them I can't help but think that they're more accurate representations of contemporary reality than what most of us perceive as reality.
Modern citizens have become so alienated that we aren't even aware of the degree to which we've become alienated. Many of Artzybasheff's illustrations are weapons systems, like tanks and planes and artillery pieces, with human features. And actually this isn't too far fetched, because modern warfare essentially turns soldiers—and the citizens who send them into battle and support the war effort—into killing machines. Equally, our economic systems, in a very real sense, turns us into machines. We all know what it's like to feel like a hamster on a wheel that's spinning faster than we can keep up. The demands of work and commuting often don't take into account whether our duties are humanly possible. The demands of economic competition force us to become virtual machines in service of the greater economy.
In Japan, for example, the demands of education and the workplace have almost eliminated any semblance of a private life. But this is becoming true of all developed economies; and it's even more true of third world economies, where companies exist that are essentially a new form of slave labor. And the forces that drive us all are essentially impersonal; they pertain to profits and the bottom line. We all serve the numbers on bank ledgers! America is competing with Germany, Japan, and now China and India; and they're competing with us. But we're all actually competing with a single force: “efficiency.” And efficiency is a relentless master—a master that no single nation can gurantee it will always be able to satisfy. Any nation can fall out of favor with the grand master known as efficiency. Aand Artzybasheff's illustrations of humanoid industrial machines are a vivid representation of that reality as well.
Click on Image to Enlarge
So I submit that his illustrations show the true reality stripped of all pretense. They're more than symbolic and metaphorical: they remove the veil from our eyes and allow us to see things as they actually are! In fact we're more like Artzybasheff's machine-creatures than any of us wants to admit. And unless we citizens of the world reclaim our humanity and stop allowing impersonal economic forces to turn us all into machines, we'll get ground up in the gears of our machines.
It's too bad that Artzybasheff isn't still around. We could really use him to help us see the realies that we've taken so much for granted for so long that they've become invisible to us.
This article refers to GMO labeling, but also to toxic pharmaceuticals, harmful vaccines, and other chemical assaults on human health and life.
There is a myth that the free market wins out against all odds. The consumer decides. He buys what he wants, and doesn’t buy what he thinks is unhealthy. Pretty to think so, but false.
There is another factor at work.
It’s called: crime.
It’s a crime to poison people.
If you’re the CEO of a corporation which sells poison under any name, in any package, a state or federal attorney should have your ass in court, and then in jail. For a long time.
