Category: Journal ISSN 1078-1935

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Mini-Me: Obama Approves CIA War on Syria, CIA & Arabs Arming Islamic Militants Instead — But Wait, Could This Be Smoke Related to Benghazi-Based Acts of War on Syria?

Corruption, Government, Ineptitude, Media, Military
Who? Mini-Me?

Huh?

New York Times: Arms Shipments ‘Secretly’ Approved by Obama Admin. Ended Up in Hands of Islamic Militants

Jason Howerton

The Blaze, 5 December 2012

U.S.-Approved Arms for Libya Rebels Fell Into Jihadis’ Hands

By , and

New York Times, December 5, 2012

WASHINGTON — The Obama administration secretly gave its blessing to arms shipments to Libyan rebels from Qatar last year, but American officials later grew alarmed as evidence grew that Qatar was turning some of the weapons over to Islamic militants, according to United States officials and foreign diplomats.

. . . . . . .

“To do this right, you have to have on-the-ground intelligence and you have to have experience,” said Vali Nasr, a former State Department adviser who is now dean of the Paul H. Nitze School of Advanced International Studies, part of Johns Hopkins University. “If you rely on a country that doesn’t have those things, you are really flying blind. When you have an intermediary, you are going to lose control.”

Read full article.

Tip of the Hat to Jaimi Miller and Richard Byrd at Google+.

Continue reading “Mini-Me: Obama Approves CIA War on Syria, CIA & Arabs Arming Islamic Militants Instead — But Wait, Could This Be Smoke Related to Benghazi-Based Acts of War on Syria?”

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Yoda: See What NSA Captures ….ACHIFY IS NOT RECOMMENDED

Advanced Cyber/IO
Got Crowd? BE the Force!

UPDATE:  NOT RECOMMENDED.  A pain in the ass every time you open a web page.  Kind of like NSA, but Achify is in your face all the time.

Is, what is, this is.

  • Capture everything

    All your browsing history and social network updates in one place.

  • Find anything

    Easily search your archive to find the websites you’ve already seen and your social network updates.

  • Personal statistics

    Get a personal interactive report featuring weekly insights and usage statistics of your web and social footprints.

Continue reading “Yoda: See What NSA Captures ….ACHIFY IS NOT RECOMMENDED”

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SchwartzReport: Local and Regional Restructuring of the American Continent

07 Venezuela, 08 Wild Cards, Communities of Practice, Cultural Intelligence, Earth Intelligence

Here is an excellent analysis of an important aspect of the Great Schism Trend: the move to localism, and regionalism.

This “Chapter Fourteen” is part eighteen of Truthout's continuing series of excerpts from Gar Alperovitz's “America beyond Capitalism.”

 

Click on Image to Enlarge

The Regional Restructuring of the American Continent

By Gar Alperovitz, Democracy Collaborative Press | Serialized Book

truthout.org, Thursday, 06 December 2012 10:44

Americans committed to a renewal of democracy are likely to discover this can only be meaningfully achieved in units of scale smaller than a continent, but also of sufficient size to be capable of substantial semiautonomous functioning: the region.

The Pluralist Commonwealth model attempts to deal seriously with long-standing arguments that the sheer continental size of the United States and its very large population are ultimately inimical to a robust system-wide vision of democratic practice. Community-oriented strategies appear to be within the range of realistic political possibility in coming years. What of the larger and seemingly utopian idea that much more far-reaching – indeed, radical – decentralization is both necessary and possible?

Five major considerations suggest that, contrary to conventional assumption, the logic of regional restructuring is likely to become of increasing importance as the twenty-first century develops. These include trends in Supreme Court and congressional decision making; an explosion of state-based initiatives; the impact of global political-economic forces on the current federal system; very large-order projected changes in the economy and population; and new trajectories of expanding ethnic political power concentrated in key regions experiencing economic distress.

Read full article.

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NIGHTWATCH: China, India, Spratleys, Oil — and a Coming Grudge Match?

02 China, 03 India, 04 Inter-State Conflict, 05 Energy
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China-India; China warned India to stop oil exploration in the South China Sea after the Indian Chief of Naval Staff, Admiral Joshi, said he was prepared to send Indian naval ships there to protect its interests.

India's state oil company, ONGC, is exploring three oil blocks close to the disputed Spratly Islands – known as Nansha Islands in China – in partnership with the Vietnamese government, which claims sovereignty over the collection of 45 tiny islands and atolls, along with China, Taiwan, Brunei, Malaysia and the Philippines.

China told Vietnam on 6 December to stop unilateral oil exploration in disputed areas of the South China Sea and to not harass Chinese fishing boats, a Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman said.

Continue reading “NIGHTWATCH: China, India, Spratleys, Oil — and a Coming Grudge Match?”

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Richard Wright: Proposal for an Open Source Agency

Advanced Cyber/IO, Collaboration Zones
Richard Wright

Document (5 Pages): Richard Wright Proposal for an Open Source Agency

Proposal for an Open Source Agency

Executive Summary

This proposal argues that the strategic intelligence needs of U.S. Policy Makers, including the President and National Security Council, can best be met by establishing an independent Open Source Intelligence Agency (OSA) as recommended by the 9/11 Commission (Figure 1) but external to the secret world, under diplomatic auspices as agreed by senior staff in the Office of Management and Budget (OMB).

Such an agency is needed for two reasons:

First, as President Harry Truman has confirmed, the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) has not evolved to be what he wanted it to be – an all-source analytical service of common concern.

Second, as has been argued for decades (since the late 1960’s) by US intelligence community pioneers, and most recently in a white paper from the Intelligence and National Security Alliance (INSA), the fact is that unless a means is found to acquire and integrate into the secret world’s intelligence process, the 80% or more information that is not secret, not in English, and not now accessed, the secret world will be even less relevant than it is now – to the point of calling into question its extraordinary budget, over $70 billion a year, that produces almost nothing for the President and nothing at all for everyone else.

An Open Source Intelligence Agency would not impact the missions and functions of existing secret intelligence agencies (CIA, DIA, NGA, NSA), but would provide a unique type of intelligence specifically tailored to the needs the senior U.S. policy making establishment.

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Chuck Spinney: Pentagon Escaping Fiscal Cuts — To No Good End

Commerce, Corruption, Government, Military
Chuck Spinney

TIME BATTLE BLOG: MILITARY SPENDING

Business As Usual Inside Obama’s Pentagon

By Chuck Spinney, Time.com, Dec. 06, 2012

Winslow Wheeler’s three-part series on the Navy that wrapped up on Battleland Wednesday shows that the sea service is up to its old tricks.

To wit, it is impregnating President Obama’s five-year defense program by front-loading today’s budget in a way that creates irresistible pressure to grow its future budgets –even if it takes a marginal reduction in the near term.

Think of this as an emerging right to programmatic life issue, because, for reasons explained by Wheeler, abortion is out of the question, even though a programmatic miscarriage is inevitable.

Any one who doubts this, or thinks this future pathway is unlikely or accidental, need only recall the braggadocio of Ronald Reagan’s chief navy stud, Navy Secretary John Lehman, when he told a seminar in January 1983 at the Brookings Institution, that it was “too late” to stop the buildup to a 600-ship navy.

“We’ve already accomplished it,” he continued, “because we front-loaded (emphasis added) the budget.”

Predictably, Lehman’ 600-ship navy miscarried a few years later in the late 1980s in terms of fleet size, if not money.

Read full article.

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