Privacy: There are still people warning us of sleepwalking into a Stasi or “1984” society. They missed the boat by a long shot: we are already far, far past the point of Stasi or “1984”. The apparatus that governments have built to trace, track, and record citizens is the stuff of nightmares.
The scene-setting paragraph in George Orwell’s 1984 is still something that gives you chills, even as the book has so old it has come out of the copyright monopoly in Australia:
The Bank of America should by all that is fair and reasonable be penalized by being broken up, and a number of senior officials being indicted and prosecuted in court. I doubt very much that any of that will happen. We have a Justice Department that clearly takes the position that big banks are above the law — they wouldn't say that, of course, but that is effectively their position. No major figure has been prosecuted at the Federal level for 2008,! so what do you think will happen in 2013?
The trend of a few Non-geographical corporate states, and their vassal governments, helping them to take over control of food and water worldwide is gathering momentum.
I follow the Theocratic Right closely, because I consider fundamentalism, whether Christian, Muslim, Jewish, or anything else as one of the most pernicious socially toxic forces in society — any society. One of the universals of fundamentalism is a strong sexual dysfunctionality, with an emphasis on male dominance. Just how weird this movement is becoming in the U.S.! is seen in this story. I want to point out that Theocratic Right women are fully complicit in this.
Afghanistan: President Karzai's spokesman said Wednesday that Afghanistan has suspended Bilateral Security Agreement talks with the US and that Afghanistan will not pursue peace talks with the Taliban unless the United States steps out of the negotiations.
The spokesman explained President Karzai took the action because of a contradiction between what the US says and does.
Comment: The Afghan government judges it has been betrayed by the US in agreeing to talks with the Islamic Emirate. Afghanistan said no such entity exists. It was told the Doha office was only for negotiations.
Qatar said the Taliban betrayed their promise to open only a political office of the Taliban. Qatari authorities were persuaded to force the Taliban to take down their flag and their Islamic Emirate plaque. The US said the Afghan government had been kept fully informed.
1.1 Adds contribution “An API for NATO” from Innovation Hub participant laukner, and adds Open Source Everything (OSE) graphic that most of us agree is the necessary technical transformation that must take place for the UN, EU, NATO, BRICS, and others to be effective at M4IS2 and creating a prosperous world at peace, a world that works for all.
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This post addresses five questions in the context of the NATO Members and NATO Commander's mission intent — one excellent and still useful reference is Charles Barry, “Transforming NATO Command and Control for Future Missions,” World Security Network, 15 October 2003, see especially the section on the Allied Transformation Command that emphasized transformation lessons learned, guidelines, benchmarks, concepts, and doctrine; funding priorities for design and implementation of transformational or alternative C3 (consultation, command, and control) among NATO members and external non-NATO elements essential to mission success.
01 Who are the customers of an alternative command and control schema, and how do we involve them?
Russian Advanced Weapons for Syria: Unrevealed Secrets of Vladimir Putin’s Recent Visit to London
[Editors Note: We had reported earlier that when the Israelis used an American made mini-nuke bunker buster in the Damascus attack that they had crossed Russia ‘quiet red line' of using a tactical nuke against an non attacking opponent.
This not only forced them to move Syrian air space defenses to block additional Israeli attacks, but also get fully deployed when the calls from the Israeli Lobby shills like John ‘McQaeda' McCain and Lindsy Graham for a no fly zone which none of our military thinks is a smart idea, the wrong fight, in the wrong place, at the wrong time.
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With the Russian navy back in the Mediterranean and the Israelis threatening to attack their air defense weapons in transit, this gave the Russians no choice but to deploy all of their top line weapons systems to protect their defensive deployment. Unsaid has been that any pre-emptive attack on the Russians would be dealt with in a full response so that the attacking party could then explain to it's citizen once again why Syria was worth the devastation.
NATO is a hollow shell that could not fight its way out of a paper bag. America is expected to do most everything and of course pay for it. And if someone on our side makes an aggressive move I expect to see a quick response. We would do the same. But no one is threatening us.
We and our proxies are the threatening parties here, taking us to war inch by inch thinking they will be able to pull some incident out of the hat to make it all look like we were attacked and then responded. No one will believe that…because it will not be true. And if the Saudis and Gulf States think they are going to move armor into Syria and not pay a price for it I suspect they will be getting an education the hard way…Jim W. Dean]
The following report comes to us from intelligence sources that have been able to confirm some of the “legend” behind the story. If this is true, and we have confirmed that the S 300 missile defense system has been, for some weeks now, in the hands of the Syrian military despite denials by the “pop culture press,” Putin has made an interesting and very necessary move.
Patrick Cockburn has written a very important essay on Syria in the London Review of Books (attached below). The essay is aptly titled but has only a few oblique, albeit important, references to Sykes – Picot Agreement, a document some readers may not familiar with. Let's begin with a little background.
The Sykes-Picot agreement (it was a secret agreement concocted by two bureaucrats) is one of the most cynical documents in the creation of the modern Middle East.
The Encylopaedia Britannica describes it accurately as follows:
It was a … “secret convention made during World War I (1916) between Great Britain and France, with the assent of imperial Russia, for the dismemberment of the Ottoman Empire. The agreement led to the division of Turkish-held Syria, Iraq, Lebanon, and Palestine into various French- and British-administered areas. The agreement took its name from its negotiators, Sir Mark Sykes
First, Syria has been spilling refugees all over the region. Jordan is poor, Iraq is fragile and even their smaller contingent is causing trouble. Lebanon experiences a fragile balance of ethnic and sectarian tensions. The 420,000 new residents upset that balance and threaten to tip the country into chaos like it had in the 1980s.
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Second, the Kurds were mostly at peace with Turkey until Syria fell into disorder. The Syrian government withdrew from Kurdish turf to reduce their interest in the fighting, then it is possible both Syria and Iran had a hand in setting the Kurdish PKK‘s insurgency back in motion against Turkey. Neither Iran nor Syria wants any trouble with the Kurds in their territory, both want to preserve the Shia arc from Iran to Syria, Sunni majority Turkey has been trending more Islamist in its thinking, and has chosen to back the Sunni majority rebellion in Syria.
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The Turkish choice to focus on the Sunni aspect of the rebellion rather than an inclusive government that would respect the Alawite, Druze, and Christian minorities is a sticking point for the U.S. If things go badly Syria may become a bigger, badder, bloodier version of what Lebanon was like thirty years ago.
