Journal ISSN 1078-1935 – Page 1900 – Public Intelligence Blog

The Fertile Cresent is often referred to as the cradle of civilization. The map show the Nile, the Tigris, and the Euphrates. Not shown but equally important are the Jordan, which drains to the Dead Sea, and Lebanon’s Litani River.

Each of these waterways is shared between at least three countries, with the exception of the Litani, which has been determined to be entirely within Lebanon’s territory. Each is heavily overdrawn and plagued by mishandling, most often in the form of aging, leaky irrigation infrastructure.

The area was the scene of our mastery of agricultural and animal husbandry between 10,000 and 12,000 years ago. Cities such as Damascus and Jericho are believed to have been continuously occupied for the last 11,000 years. But current reports on all five drainage basins point to trouble brewing for the entire region.

Water issues are embedded in any geopolitical concerns for the region, but this far I have only written The Nile’s Annual Flood, Losing The Euphrates, and mentioned the Jordan in passing in Monitoring The Golan Heights. Like my attention on wheat production, examining rainfall and groundwater usage can provide insight into the potential for trouble far in advance of events that actually make the news.

Continue reading “Neal Rauhauser: Rivers of the Fertile Crescent (Six Graphics)”

2013/06/162013/06/16

Marcus Aurelius: UK Cuts Military, Lacks Ability to Reconfigure – Huge Opportunity for NATO NNEC

Government, Ineptitude, Military

Is this the future of America in the world — racing pell-mell after the UK using essentially the same strategy that the Brits say we condemn?

If You Want To Be Obama's Lieutenant, PM, You'll Need Soldiers

By Camilla Cavendish

London Sunday Times, June 16, 2013, Pg. 21

On Friday the sonorous boom of the military rang out, above the cacophony and jostling before the chancellor's spending review. The government had been making increasingly frantic efforts to stop military leaders talking to journalists. But the generals broke ranks. And for a prime minister on a crusade to intervene in Syria, it proved impossible to ignore.

The head of the army, General Sir Peter Wall, told Sky News on Friday that any further cuts to the defence budget could prove “quite dangerous, quite soon” to Britain's success on future battlefields. He got reinforcements from Lieutenant-General Nick Carter, Britain's most senior officer in Afghanistan, who said that politicians should “look themselves in the mirror each morning and determine whether or not the risks are manageable”.

While it is predictable that soldiers defend their patch — there are many other worthy claimants in the queue for a reprieve — it seems that Britain is genuinely on the brink of irreversibly altering its military capability.

Continue reading “Marcus Aurelius: UK Cuts Military, Lacks Ability to Reconfigure – Huge Opportunity for NATO NNEC”

2013/06/162013/06/16

Marcus Aurelius: Reuel Marc-Gerecht on NSA High Cost – Low Return — Robert Steele Comments

03 Economy, 07 Other Atrocities, 09 Justice, 10 Security, 11 Society, Corruption, Director of National Intelligence et al (IC), DoD, Government, Idiocy, Ineptitude, IO Deeds of War, IO Impotency, Military, Office of Management and Budget, Officers Call

The Costs And Benefits Of The NSA

The data-collection debate we need to have is not about civil liberties.

By Reuel Marc Gerecht

Weekly Standard, June 24, 2013

Should Americans fear the possible abuse of the intercept power of the National Security Agency at Fort Meade, Maryland? Absolutely. In the midst of the unfolding scandal at the IRS, we understand that bureaucracies are callous creatures, capable of manipulation. In addition to deliberate misuse, closed intelligence agencies can make mistakes in surveilling legitimate targets, causing mountains of trouble. Consider Muslim names. Because of their commonness and the lack of standardized transliteration, they can befuddle scholars, let alone intelligence analysts, who seldom have fluency in Islamic languages. Although one is hard pressed to think of a case since 9/11 in which mistaken identity, or a willful or unintentional leak of intercept intelligence, immiserated an American citizen, these things can happen. NSA civilian employees, soldiers, FBI agents, CIA case officers, prosecutors, and our elected officials are not always angels. Even though encryption is mathematically easier to accomplish than decryption, the potential for abuse of digital communication is always there—all the more since few Americans resort to encryption of their everyday emails.

But fearing the NSA, which has been a staple of Hollywood for decades, requires you to believe that hundreds, if not thousands, of American employees in the organization are in on a conspiracy. In the Edward Snowden-is-a-legitimate-NSA-whistleblower narrative, it also requires that very liberal senators and congressmen are complicit in propagating a civil-rights-chewing national surveillance system.

Continue reading “Marcus Aurelius: Reuel Marc-Gerecht on NSA High Cost – Low Return — Robert Steele Comments”

2013/06/162013/06/16

Berto Jongman: Congress Briefed on Mumbai-Type Threat to USA

09 Terrorism

PROTECTING THE HOMELAND AGAINST MUMBAI-STYLE ATTACKS AND THE THREAT FROM LASHKAR-E-TAIBA

Testimony by Dr. Stephen Tankel, Professor, American University & Nonresident Scholar, South Asia Program Carnegie Endowment for International Peace

House Homeland Security Committee

June 12, 2013

PDF (13 Pages)

Continue reading “Berto Jongman: Congress Briefed on Mumbai-Type Threat to USA”

2013/06/162013/06/16

Berto Jongman: Explicit Photos of US Uniform Rapes of Iraqi Girls — and US Cover-Up Re-Surfacing in Asia and Europe

07 Other Atrocities, 08 Wild Cards, Corruption, Cultural Intelligence, DoD, Government, Idiocy, Military, Officers Call

Rape of Iraqi Women by US Forces as Weapon of War: Photos and Data Emerge

Phi Beta Iota: The rest of the world is sick of US misbehavior, upset at the continued posture of the US Government in covering up rather than remediating such persistent abuses, and saddened by the idiocy and passivity of the US public in the face of such atrocities. The national shame is enduring — and an obstacle to any possible progress on any front as long as the current Administration remains in lock-step with the mis-steps of its predecessor's crimes against humanity.

Three Explicit Photos and Full Article Below the Line

Continue reading “Berto Jongman: Explicit Photos of US Uniform Rapes of Iraqi Girls — and US Cover-Up Re-Surfacing in Asia and Europe”

2013/06/16

John Robb: The Implosion of the US National Security State

05 Civil War, 07 Other Atrocities, 11 Society, Corruption, DHS, Director of National Intelligence et al (IC), DoD, Government, Idiocy, Ineptitude, Law Enforcement, Military, Officers Call

DATA Dystopia. The NSA Scandal and Beyond.

In the last couple of weeks, we've gotten confirmation that what we've been assuming is true:

The government is snooping on us. They aren't lightly snooping. :

They are gathering data on EVERYONE (inside and outside the US) simultaneously.
Storing it in databases that will last forever, and
Mining that data in the hopes of proving that you are a criminal/terrorist.

What are they snooping on?

Continue reading “John Robb: The Implosion of the US National Security State”

2013/06/16

SchwartzReport: National Security Machine Focused on US Public & Repressing Dissent

05 Civil War, 07 Other Atrocities, 11 Society, Corruption, DHS, Director of National Intelligence et al (IC), DoD, Government, Idiocy, Ineptitude, Law Enforcement, Military, Officers Call

This is one of the most important essays SR has ever published. Here, I believe you see the real reason for the creation of the security apparat. Terrorism is its second, but public, brief. Its real brief is to prepare for climate change. When you cut through what flows out of the Aegean Stable! s that is the Congress, you find that in the civil and military bureaucracies they are laying track for what they see coming.

This should definitely give you pause.

Pentagon Bracing for Public Dissent Over Climate and Energy Shocks
DR. NAFEEZ MOSADDEQ AHMED, Executive Director of the Institute for Policy Research & Development – The Guardian (U.K.)

Continue reading “SchwartzReport: National Security Machine Focused on US Public & Repressing Dissent”