Journal: Spy Games, Clapper on a Time Out

02 Diplomacy, 04 Education, 06 Russia, 08 Wild Cards, 09 Justice, 10 Security, 11 Society, Corruption, Ethics, Government, Military, Peace Intelligence

Marcus Aurelius Recommends

Russians in Spy Exchange Include Hanssen Case Figure

(July 9) — A former Russian intelligence officer who may have provided information that helped uncover two of the worst spies in U.S. history — Robert Hanssen and Aldrich Ames — is among the four Russians swapped for 10 sleeper agents in an elaborate Cold War-style spy swap today.

U.S. Seized Opportunity In Arrests Of Russians

Preparation for biggest spy swap since Cold War began weeks before

By Karen DeYoung

President Obama's national security team spent weeks before the arrest of 10 Russian spies preparing for their takedown and assembling a list of prisoners Moscow might be willing to trade for the agents, senior administration officials said Friday.

Intel Chief Nominee In Limbo

The Situation Room (CNN), 5:00 P.M.

WOLF BLITZER: But now to a striking gap in America’s homeland security. It’s been over a month since President Obama named his choice to become the new director of National Intelligence, but James Clapper still hasn’t been confirmed for the job and there is no telling when or if he will be. Our Pentagon correspondent Barbara Starr is working the story for us.

Barbara, what’s going on here?

BARBARA STARR: Well, you know, Wolf, Russian spy swaps, al Qaeda at the door step, and no director of National Intelligence in this country, a lot of concerns about really who is minding the store.

Summer time confirmation hearings for General David Petraeus to run the war in Afghanistan and Elena Kagan to join the Supreme Court quickly planned and carried out. But there’s another critical nomination out there that’s been anything but.

Continue reading “Journal: Spy Games, Clapper on a Time Out”

2010/07/102010/07/10

NIGHTWATCH Extract: China Rules Central Asia….

02 China, 08 Wild Cards

China-Pakistan: China and Pakistan signed four memorandums of understanding in health, power generation and the construction of two major highways in Gilgit-Baltistan, The Associated Press of Pakistan reported 9 July.

According to the road construction agreements, China will construct the 165-kilometer (103-mile) Jaglot-Skardu road and the 135-kilometer (84-mile) Thakot-Sazin road. The projects will cost $965 million with 85 percent financing by China and 15 percent by Pakistan. The memorandums were signed after Pakistani President Asif Ali Zardari addressed the Pak-China Economic Cooperation Forum.

The significance of the road agreements is that the location of the roads is in the Himalayas, the most rugged regions of Pakistan that adjoin China. They will facilitate increased contacts to China. . It is unusual for there to be published in one week multiple new events about infrastructure projects in the same remote region of the Himalayas. It makes one suspect that the Chinese have found valuable mineral deposits about which they are not talking in public.

They also have a military dimension because they will improve the lines of communication in the far north of Pakistan which was the setting for the Kargil War in 1999.

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Continue reading “NIGHTWATCH Extract: China Rules Central Asia….”

2010/07/092010/07/09

Journal: When are Leaks Good for Society?

04 Inter-State Conflict, 05 Civil War, 07 Other Atrocities, 08 Wild Cards, 09 Justice, 10 Security, Civil Society, Collective Intelligence, Corruption, Ethics, Government, Law Enforcement, Military, Peace Intelligence

Marcus Aurelius Recommends

Charges for Soldier Accused of Leak

The New York Times

By STEVEN LEE MYERS
July 6, 2010

BAGHDAD — An American soldier in Iraq who was arrested on charges of leaking a video of a deadly American helicopter attack here in 2007 has also been charged with downloading more than 150,000 highly classified diplomatic cables that could, if made public, reveal the inner workings of American embassies around the world, the military here announced Tuesday.

Army intelligence analyst charged in Wikileaks case

By Leila Fadel

Washington Post Foreign Service
Wednesday, July 7, 2010

BAGHDAD — The military said Tuesday that it has charged an Army intelligence analyst in connection with the leak of a controversial video and the downloading and transfer of classified State Department cables, in a case that is likely to further deter would-be whistleblowers.

Click on headlines to read each full story.

Phi Beta Iota: PFC Manning swore an oath to defend the Constitutions, not the chain of command and not the secrecy of immoral, illegal, and unaffordable policies that are funded by the U.S. taxpayer and done “in our name” but not at all in our interest. Sunshine is the best disinfectant.

His charge sheet rests on “discrediting the Armed Forces” which is laughable–it is the behavior of our leaders that is a discredit to all of America; and on subverting “good order and discipline.” His behavior in revealing the webs of deceit and incompetence that characterize our military, our “diplomats,” and our spies is precisely what America needs in order to re-establish good order and discipline in harmony with our Constitution.

America needs MORE leaks, MORE “misbehavior,” because we now suffer a “system” that is so far removed from the Founding Fathers' vision, and so deeply divorced from the principles enshrined in our Constitution, that we must, without question, consider PFC Manning to be a “just man” whose best place in a time of injustice is to be in jail as an example to us all. BRAVO ZULU for courage and intelligence in the face of the enemy–he is us. If the lawyer for the defense has any integrity at all, this will be a public jury trial and the PFC will walk free, as he should. It's time to trash this pathological system and get back to the basics of freedom and a foreign policy of commerce and peace.

Wikipedia on Civil Disobedience

Civil Disobedience (Resistance to Civil Government) is an essay by Henry David Thoreau that was first published in 1849. It argues that people should not permit governments to overrule or atrophy their consciences, and that people have a duty to avoid allowing such acquiescence to enable the government to make them the agents of injustice. Thoreau was motivated in part by his disgust with slavery and the Mexican-American War.

Resistance also served as part of Thoreau's metaphor which compared the government to a machine, and said that when the machine was working injustice it was the duty of conscientious citizens to be “a counter friction” (i.e., a resistance) “to stop the machine”.

2010/07/09

NIGHTWATCH Extract: Gwadar for Peace & Prosperity

02 China, 05 Iran, 08 Wild Cards

Wikipedia Page

Pakistan: Security. Several Chinese engineers working in Baluchistan survived an attempt on their lives when unidentified assailants fired two rockets at a five -star hotel in the provincial town, in a pre-dawn attack on Wednesday. According to reports, the Chinese engineers left the hotel elevator minutes before the attack, which damaged a portion of the hotel building.

The Chinese engineers had arrived in Gwadar recently and were reportedly working on an oil refinery. Official sources believe that they were the targets of the attack. Security officials and paramilitary forces cordoned off the area after the attack and began investigations against unidentified assailants.

Comment: Baluch hostility to foreigners is less interesting than that the Chinese are building an oil refinery in Gwadar, in western Pakistan. That provides the motive for building a railroad link to Xinjiang, China, or maybe a pipeline, if that is feasible.

China is developing lines of communication through Pakistan and Burma to complement oil pipelines in central Asia that will ensure crude supplies to China in the event of a crisis in Northeast or Southeast Asia in which US Naval forces would disrupt the maritime supply route through the Straits of Malacca and Singapore.

Wikipedia on Gwadar:

Gwadar (Urdu: گوادر) is located on the southwestern coast of Pakistan, on the Arabian Sea. It is strategically located between three increasingly important regions: the oil-rich Middle East, heavily populated South Asia and the economically emerging and resource-laden region of Central Asia. The Gwadar Port was built on a turnkey basis by China and signifies an enlarging Chinese footprint in a critically important area.

Phi Beta Iota: The comparison between Chinese strategic thinking and US strategic thinking is instructive–they understand and practice both strategy and thinking, the US does not.

2010/07/082010/07/08

Journal: Towards the Eighteenth Brumaire of General David Petraeus?

02 China, 05 Iran, 08 Wild Cards, Cultural Intelligence, Military

photo tarpley new — Webster Griffin Tarpley

Webster G. Tarpley TARPLEY.net June 23, 2010

Prodded doubtless by forces above and behind the Oval Office, Obama has ousted General McChrystal in favor of General Petraeus, who now combines the post of CENTCOM theater commander with that of NATO commander in Afghanistan. This is a move deriving from the inherent fecklessness and incompetence of the Obama administration, especially from the imperialist point of view. Recent events have highlighted Obama’s total lack of executive ability, leaving him weakened as he faced the bizarre flap about some barrack-room gripes by McChrystal’s staff collected by a correspondent from Rolling Stone magazine. Because of Obama’s weakness, he felt obliged to react to the scuttlebutt peddled by Rolling Stone, when a stronger president could have dismissed it or ignored it. As Fletcher Pratt once wrote, Abraham Lincoln was capable of laughing an attempted coup d’état out of existence with an off-color joke. Obama is far too weak for that.

As for General McChrystal, he was critically weakened and made vulnerable to ouster by the total failure of his counterinsurgency strategy, with the Marja offensive faltering and the Kandahar offensive indefinitely delayed, even as NATO losses rise exponentially, President Karzai turns towards Tehran and Beijing, and many of the NATO coalition partners prepare to defect.

One effect of the sacking of McChrystal is likely to be the accelerated breakup of the US-led Afghan invasion coalition, which was already in bad shape before this incident. The Netherlands and Canada are leaving, the British and the Poles want to join them, and the Turks can hardly be enthusiastic. Who else will join them in the race for the exit door? NATO Secretary General Rasmussen, anticipating such a result, spoke out yesterday in favor of keeping McChrystal, who works for him as well as for Obama. More countries may now announce their departure even before the November NATO summit in Lisbon, Portugal.

Another of McChrystal’s bosses, Afghan President Karzai, also made clear that he wanted McChrystal to stay. He will now use Obama’s flaunting of his wishes to accelerate his own playing of the China card in economic policy and the Iranian card in cultural and religious affairs. Afghanistan is likely to slip into the Chinese orbit.

FULL STORY ONLINE

2010/07/082010/07/08

NIGHTWATCH Extract: China Wages Peace with Railroads Across Pakistan and Into Afghanistan

02 China, 03 India, 08 Wild Cards, Commercial Intelligence, Peace Intelligence

India: Minister of State for Defense M. M. Pallam Raju on 7 July said India is concerned about China's plans to build a rail link with Pakistan through the Karakoram mountain range, The Times of India reported. He said India is planning to take countermeasures against the proposed link.

Comment: This is one of four strategically significant rail projects in Asia. All are important in the UN master plan for Asian railroads, but several stand out.

The first is the Chinese project to build a railroad line in Afghanistan that runs southward from the Oxus River to China's Aynak Copper Mine in Logar Province. This is one of the largest, if not the largest, copper deposit in the world. Eventually it could become the leading edge of mineral extraction projects that could transform Afghanistan a generation from now, if security conditions permit.

The second project is the Iranian railroad to Herat, in western Afghanistan. This is moving ahead slowly, but follows a hard road already built by the Iranians. It will tie relatively quiet Herat and western Afghanistan to the economic market area of Mashhad, Iran's second largest city, when completed.

The third rail project with strategic significance is in North Korea, which has two sub-projects that can complete the link of Europe by rail to Japan. Completion of these long delayed spurs depend on whether whoever runs anything in North Korea ever gets a sound grip on their own economic best interests and permit upgrades to the Chinese and to the Russian spurs that run across the Demilitarized Zone and link to the South Korean rail systems that terminate at Pusan. A ferry ride across the Tsushima Strait links to Japan railroads and Tokyo. London to Tokyo by rail is in sight, if the North Koreans would only decide to become prosperous.

The latest project is that announced for Pakistan. In the 1971 general war with India, only Chinese truck convoys through the Karakoram Mountains via the Khunjerab Pass kept Pakistan in the war for the two weeks it actually fought before suing for peace and losing East Pakistan.

The Khunjerab Pass is the highest elevation paved international border at 15,400 ft above sea level. The railroad would presumably follow the Karakoram Highway, which is the highest paved road in the world.

A rail link through those mountains and that pass would link Xinjiang, China, to Karachi and Gwadar – the Chinese built port in southwestern Pakistan on the Indian Ocean — via the Pakistani rail system. The throughput capacity would be exponentially larger than that achievable by truck convoys.

This railroad will create a new market system. No wonder India is concerned, economically and militarily. Pakistan really would become an extension of the new Chinese economic empire. All China needs to do is to complete railroads through Burma and link the Afghanistan line to Iran and it will have an Asian rail empire, within a generation, all the way to the English Channel without using the Trans-Siberian.

NIGHTWATCH HOME

Phi Beta Iota: This is the kind of strategic analysis rooted in solid intellect that should characterize the entire US Intelligence Community, not one lone individual. Three big things appear to be looming on the horizon: free cellular around the planet, monetizing the transactions instead of the connections; low-cost rail (and eventually the Buckminster Fuller electrical grid) girding the globe; and finally, the up-ending of capitalism to focus on the needs–and wealth-creating capabilities–of the five billion poor. No one in Washington, London, Paris, Bonn, or Toyko–or even New Delhi and Jakarta where they have the most to gain–is thinking about this. That is a crime against humanity, a moral and intellectual atrocity so horrendous as to call into question the legitimacy of every government.