08 Wild Cards – Page 134 – Public Intelligence Blog

220px-Michel_Bauwens_crop — Michel Bauwens

Israel used Facebook to stop European pro-Palestine activists

IntelNews.Org, 12 July 2011

Joseph Fitsanakis

Israeli intelligence services managed to stop dozens of European pro-Palestine activists from flying to Israel, by gathering open-source intelligence about them on social media sites, such as Facebook. According to Israeli Foreign Ministry spokesman Yigal Palmor, intelligence gathered on Facebook formed the basis of a blacklist containing over 300 names of European activists, who had signed up on an open-access Facebook page of a group planning nonviolent actions in Israel this summer.

Israeli intelligence agencies forwarded the names on the lists to European airline carriers, asking them not to allow the activists onboard their flights, as they were not going to be allowed into the country. This action prompted airline carriers to prevent over 200 activists from boarding scheduled flights to Israel. Israeli security officers detained over 310 other activists, who arrived in Israel on several European flights last week. Of those, almost 70 were denied entry to the country, while more detentions are expected to take place later this week, according to Israeli Interior Ministry spokeswoman Sabine Hadad.

During the detention operation, at least two flights into Israel, from Geneva, Switzerland, and Rome, Italy, were diverted to a secluded area of the Ben Gurion International Airport, which is located a few miles southeast of Tel Aviv. Once there, they were boarded by armed Israeli security officers, who detained several activists onboard the airplanes before allowing the remaining passengers to disembark. Witnesses also reported the presence of hundreds of police officers at Ben Gurion during the detention of the activists. Characteristically, only one of a 40-strong pro-Palestinian activist contingency onboard an EasyJet flight from London, UK, was able to enter Israel, while 39 were detained and sent back to the UK.

2011/07/092011/10/22

Dolphin: Electoral Rage in Malaysia, Open Insurgency?

03 Economy, 07 Other Atrocities, 08 Wild Cards, 11 Society, Advanced Cyber/IO, Civil Society, Corruption, Counter-Oppression/Counter-Dictatorship Practices, Cultural Intelligence, Government

From a Human Intelligence perspective, below is a very strong signal that the Arab Spring and its “Days of Rage” are spreading; even well-managed countries such as Malaysia (and one speculates, badly-managed ones like the USA) appear to be in line for Electoral Reform protests and perhaps Open Source Insurgency.

Malaysia police fire tear gas, arrest 1,600 at protest

Demonstrators march in defiance of ban, call for electoral reform

KUALA LUMPUR, Malaysia — Police fired repeated rounds of tear gas and detained more than 1,600 people in the capital on Saturday as thousands of activists evaded roadblocks and barbed wire to hold a street protest against Prime Minister Najib Razak's government.

Phi Beta Iota: All governments are in the process of collapse as credible sole focal points for governance. None are gearing up for the inevitable emergence of bio-regional hybrid governance networks based on accountability, information-sharing, transparency, and a common interest in sustainable peace and prosperity.

Mark Zuckerberg: What To Do Once People Are Connected

Michel Bauwens: Integrity & Regional/Global Change

Growing Demands for Participatory Democracy

Open Source Insurgency = System Disruption

2011/07/08

DefDog: US Obliviousness to Afghan Tribal Realities

08 Wild Cards, Civil Society, Corruption, Cultural Intelligence, Government

More in follow-up to Chuck Spinney: An Aghan’s Angst Over Corruption…

A fundamental understanding of the Pashtun would make evident the problem with election rigging in Afghanistan. As a tribal group, nobody is elected to serve as a leader. Thus, voting, regardless what the West thinks, is not something that most Pashtuns care about or partake in. Thus, Karzai knew he had to rig the elections to win. The Hazara understand politics and thus have energized their ethnic grouping to participate as government bureaucrats and advance through educational means (there are more and more private Hazara private schools coming into existence than any other grouping, to include government sponsored). This was the crux of the problem with the last Parliamentary election, Hazaras won most of the seats from Ghazni Province, a primarily Pashtun area. Very few Pashtun voted but almost every Hazara did.

The past presidents of Afghanistan have all come to power through the Coup method, not through the electoral process.

And besides, the rural Afghan population could care less about a Central Government. This is more true among the Pashtun that do not look on Kabul as nothing more than a gathering point not a seat of power.

2011/07/082011/07/08

Chuck Spinney: An Aghan’s Angst Over Corruption

04 Inter-State Conflict, 05 Civil War, 07 Other Atrocities, 08 Wild Cards, 10 Security, 11 Society, Corruption, Cultural Intelligence, Government, IO Impotency, Military, Officers Call

I received this email from an Afghan (Pashtun) friend, who now lives in Europe and has a doctors degree from Oxford

Chuck

I’m sending you this email for two reasons:

1. The account of what has happened is fairly accurate.

2. Because the author's type of belief beggars the imagination: Namely, that a “democracy” can be imposed over-night on a social system that evolved over 2000 years with its own highly developed, deeply ingrained social dynamics, by a bunch of self-interested crooks.

I love his prescription: “The crisis created by Karzai's Court underscores the necessity for a genuine Afghan led dialogue on democratic reform. Options must be explored to strengthen the independence and resilience of Afghanistan's democratic institutions.”

If this could not be done during the past ten years, with this bunch in power, what hope is there that it’ll be ever accomplished with Karzai & Co. still at the helm ?

On the other hand, it’s understandable that he peddles this type of nonsense, because otherwise he’d be out of a job.

Karzais Court

By Jed Ober, Foreign Policy.com, July 7, 2011

In January of this year, Afghan President Hamid Karzai yielded to domestic and international pressure and endorsed the seating of the new Afghan parliament against the recommendation of a Special Court he created to evaluate election fraud claims. Few would have predicted then that six months later Karzai's Court would bring the country to the brink of complete political collapse.

Read full article….

2011/07/042011/07/04

Cynthia McKinney: Obama Conniving, Gaddafi Speech

04 Inter-State Conflict, 05 Civil War, 07 Other Atrocities, 08 Wild Cards, 10 Security, 11 Society, Corruption, Government, IO Impotency, Misinformation & Propaganda

Obama's secret plan to spin his Libyan misadventure

Senior Congressional sources in Washington have disclosed to The Mail on Sunday that President Obama has told the Libyan rebels through intermediaries that a condition of continued support from the US is that they must hand over Megrahi if they enter Tripoli.

Brother Leader Muammar Qadhafi's Speech to Million March on July 1, 2011

The historic leader of the Libyan 1969 revolution, symbol of Libyan resistance, king of kings of Africa, Imam of Muslims, teacher of the Third Universal Theory, gave a historic speech to around one fifth of the entire Libyan population gathered to show their love and defiance.

2011/06/302011/07/01

Cost of War: Obama and Dr. Gates Both Lie….

03 Economy, 04 Inter-State Conflict, 05 Civil War, 07 Other Atrocities, 08 Wild Cards, 10 Security, 11 Society, Budgets & Funding, Corruption, Cultural Intelligence, Government, Military, Peace Intelligence

WinslowWheeler Cropped — Winslow Wheeler

Released Wednesday by the sponsoring Watson Institute of Brown University, a new multi-author study of the costs of the post-9/11 wars is available. Most prominently, the study finds the appropriations thus far to have been between $2.3 and 2.7 trillion; with an additional $884 to $1,334 billion to already have been incurred for future costs for veterans and their families. This would make a total, incurred thus far, of from $3.2 Trillion to $4.0 trillion. (Find a summary of these costs at http://costsofwar.org/article/economic-cost-summary.) It is important to note that these are basically budget costs to the federal government, not the broader economic costs to the economy or other costs to state and local governments.

The study also addresses still other expenses, such as the human costs in terms of civilian dead, the wounded, refugees, and more.

There is certainly some you will find to disagree with, but it is clear that advocates of the various conflicts who pretend the costs have been only the $1 trillion that President Obama articulated last week are feeding the nation grotesquely inaccurate information. Others, like departing SecDef Gates, who pretend that DOD spending is not a major factor in the size of our deficit are not particularly skilled in “math,” an elementary skill for government types that Secretary Gates has chosen to deride and to leave to others to perform.

I participated in the Costs of War study; see my paper on the DOD . It makes two basic points on p. 14:

1) “… while [the Congressional Research Service] and others have done long, hard, and excellent work to capture the identifiable appropriations to the Pentagon for the Post-9/11 wars, the $1.2 trillion CRS has, for example, identified in current dollars is problematic, but the fault is not with CRS, CBO, or GAO. The available figures have gaping holes and problems in them because of the sloppy, inept and misleading accounting of the costs by the Defense Department and Congress.”

2) “The $667 billion in 2011 dollars ($617 billion in current dollars) appropriated to the Defense Department's base budget since 2001 as a result of the wars, while squandered, should be included in any comprehensive attempt to capture the total cost of the wars. These amounts would bring the total DOD costs of the wars to $1.98 Trillion in constant 2011 dollars and $1.82 trillion in current dollars.”

A Reuters story below summarizes the overall “Costs of War” study.

Cost of war at least $3.7 trillion and counting

By Daniel Trotta

NEW YORK | Wed Jun 29, 2011

(Reuters) – When President Barack Obama cited cost as a reason to bring troops home from Afghanistan, he referred to a $1 trillion price tag for America's wars.

Staggering as it is, that figure grossly underestimates the total cost of wars in Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan to the U.S. Treasury and ignores more imposing costs yet to come, according to a study released on Wednesday.

The final bill will run at least $3.7 trillion and could reach as high as $4.4 trillion, according to the research project “Costs of War” by Brown University's Watson Institute for International Studies.

Phi Beta Iota: Emphasis added above. Brown, like Rutgers, is a hotbed of left-leaning intellectuals who probably wonder how a Democratic President could have become a neo-fascist war-monger. The answer is simple: corruption has no ideology. It is pervasive. Interestingly, the wire services (AP, Reuters, AFP, Bloomberg on occasion) and Russian Television as well as Al Jazeera, are emerging from this period as examples of integrity in action.

2011/06/292011/06/29

Greece About Future of Democracy, Not Budget

08 Wild Cards, 11 Society, Civil Society, Cultural Intelligence, Government

Postcard From Greece: This Should Not Be About Austerity, It's About The Future Of Democracy

Arianna Huffington

Huffington Post, 28 June 2011

Given that the Greeks invented democracy, it's only fitting that they're now being given the chance to reinvent it. And yes, I know we Greeks have a reputation for mythmaking and drama — but, as I found out during my trip to Greece last week, those really are the stakes.

Until I went over and witnessed what's happening, I too had become convinced that the real issues were the ones the media were obsessively covering: the effects of a potential sovereign default on the Euro and worries about the crisis spreading to other European countries.

But here's the bigger issue: Can a truly democratic movement break the stranglehold of corrupt elites and powerful anti-democratic institutional forces that have come to characterize not just the politics of Greece, but most Western democracies, including our own? Greece is only an extreme example of an unfolding seismic social shift that is challenging democracies the world over.

What happens in Greece might very well tell us whether democracy will recover from the crisis of legitimacy exacerbated by the financial crisis or whether it will shrink — undermined by the very forces that brought on the crisis in the first place.

It's way too early to tell whether the forces of democracy will prevail, but I came away extraordinarily moved and heartened by the courage, passion, engagement and dedication I witnessed during a trip in which three different perspectives converged.