Key Players – Page 230 – Public Intelligence Blog

2010/10/242010/10/24

America’s Next War: Southwest Border–Both Sides

03 Economy, 07 Other Atrocities, 08 Immigration, 08 Wild Cards, 09 Justice, 10 Security, 10 Transnational Crime, 11 Society, Government, Law Enforcement, Peace Intelligence

Phi Beta Iota: Most of the weapons being used by the cartels do NOT come from US gun shops. They come from the Latin American militaries who have received large shipments of “older” weapons and ammunition from the US, and then turned around and sold them to the cartels. Just as the US is indirectly funding the Taliban in Afghanistan, it is indirectly enabling the cartels with weapons. Furthermore, to imagine that with the money they have the cartels cannot “order in” anything they wish from the Chinese, Israeli, or Russian arsenals, is naive in the extreme. As many or more are dying violent deaths every day in this region as in Iraq or Afghanistan. In our view, the current era of politicians (1981-date) is going to be held accountable for four major strategic blunders, all of them deliberate:

1. Elective invasions and occupations of Afghanistan and Iraq on top of irresponsible military cuts and acquisition pathologies

2. Willful acceptance from Bush Senior onwards of the willful destruction of the US economy for the benefit of a few led by Goldman Sachs, Citi-Bank, and Morgan

3. Ignoring the depth and extent of the Southwest Border instability and threat to local communities

4. Ignoring the imminent clean water crisis across the entire region as well as across America

On The Southwest Border (Photo Essay) (Latin America News Dispatch)

Posted by Molly OToole on Sep 15th, 2010

These photographs were taken on an 852-mile, 72-hour trip across the Southwest border, from San Diego, California to Arizona and back. Many citizens from the United States and Mexico have never seen the line that divides and defines their countries, marked by walls, barbed wire fences, U.S. Border Patrol checks and, increasingly, controversy.

2010 National Drug Threat Assessment: Southwest Border Smuggling and Violence

GAO: Border fence lagging, over budget, Home Security mismanaged project, report says (Washington Times, 24 October 2010)

Napolitano visits San Diego, says border is more secure from cartels (Los Angeles Times,October 18, 2010)

Time for U.S. to get serious about cartel threat (MySanAntonio, 16 October 2010)

Cartel Threat Grows, Illegal Numbers Drop (Homeland Security Today, 6 October 2010)

Pirate Lake: Mexican Bandits Terrorizing American Boaters on the Border (FOX.News, 4 October 2010)

Governor Perry Releases Statement on Border Violence (KRGV.com Texas, 2 October 2010)

SECURE BORDER INITIATIVE DHS Needs to Address Testing and Performance Limitations That Place Key Technology Program at Risk (GAO-10-158 January 2010)

Secure Border Initiative: SBInet Expenditure Plan Needs to Better Support Oversight and Accountability (GAO-07-309 February 15, 2007)

2010/10/22

Journal: Is Israel’s Infamy Obama’s Third Strike?

02 Diplomacy, 04 Inter-State Conflict, 07 Other Atrocities, 08 Wild Cards, 09 Justice, 10 Security, 11 Society, 12 Water, Corruption, Cultural Intelligence, Government, Officers Call, Peace Intelligence

editor spinney time — Chuck Spinney Sounds Off...

Pusillanimity or Hypocrisy or Both

Memo to Obama: Three Strikes and You're Out

By FRANKLIN C. SPINNEY

Counterpunch

I believe Obama's schtick during his campaign for president was to subtly encourage his adversaries to impale themselves of the horns of their own contradictions. This kind of strategy can be particularly effective in the all-important moral dimension of an election, or indeed, any other kind of conflict. To be sure, Obama had the help of widespread disgust with Bush, as well as an exquisitely timed, terrible financial meltdown, but the parallels in his campaigns against Hillary Clinton and John McCain suggest he had an instinctive feel for gaining leverage by using what reformers in the Pentagon called the Motherhood and Mismatch, or M&M, strategy. (See my CounterPunch essay on that theme.) But to date, his strategy for governance has failed utterly to live up to that brilliance. He blew at least two stunning opportunities that seemed designed in heaven for a decisive M&M strategy. He capitulated to a morally bankrupt establishment by bailing out the banksters and then caving in to the insurance companies on health care reform.

Obama now has a third opportunity, and like his campaigns against Clinton and McCain, it is partly the result of his own making, be it accidental or deliberate. As Ira Chernus shows in a persuasively argued 19 October essay, Israel's hypocrisy in the so-called peace process has reached stunning proportions. The Palestinians are going out of their way to accommodate Israel in the so-called peace talks, but each time the Palestinians sell out their patrimony by caving in to a new Israeli demand — like recognizing Israel as a Jewish state as opposed to recognition of Israel per se, the Israelis up the ante by inserting poison pills aimed at queering any deal — like saying that settlement expansion in East Jerusalem will not be part of a settlement freeze because East Jerusalem is a part of Israel, a claim not recognized by international law, the United States, or Europe, and then acting as if Israel is the injured party.

Read balance of article….

2010/10/22

Journal: US as Dishonest Broker in Middle East

08 Wild Cards, Cultural Intelligence, Government, Peace Intelligence

The author is Jewish, an Israeli of Iraqi descent.

US: The dishonest broker

Despite high expectation for Barack Obama, the US president has not convinced Israel to cease settlement construction.

Avi Shlaim, Al Jazeera, 21 Oct 2010 12:46 GMT

Avi Shlaim is a professor of international relations at the University of Oxford and the author of Israel and Palestine: Reappraisals, Revisions, Refutations (Verso, 2009). This article first appeared on the University of Oxford, Department of Politics and International Relations Blog

The Israeli-Palestinian conflict has been both a major concern of American diplomacy since 1967 and the arena of persistent failure.

There are many reasons for America’s failure to broker a peace deal between Israel and the Palestinians but the most fundamental one is that it is a dishonest broker. As a result of its palpable partiality towards Israel, America has lost all credibility in the eyes not only of the Palestinians but of the wider Arab and Muslim worlds.

The so-called peace process has been all process and no peace. Peace talks that go nowhere slowly provide Israel with just the cover it needs to pursue its expansionist agenda on the West Bank.

Read rest of article….

2010/10/222010/10/22

NIGHTWATCH Extract: China Using Rare Earth Elements (REE) to Test Economic & Technical Pressure Options

02 China, 03 Economy, 10 Security, Commerce, Commercial Intelligence, Earth Intelligence, Government, Military

China and Rare Earth Elements: China's new Five-Year Program will fail to bring any rapid change in export quotas for rare earth elements (REE), Chinese Ambassador to the World Trade Organization Sun Zhenyu said, Reuters reported. He also said China's REE reserves were depleting quickly and that Beijing must conserve them. According to Sun, China's reserves have fallen from 33 percent of the world's total in 1996 to 30 percent presently, and that they will last only for another 15-20 years. He urged other nations to begin developing their own REE reserves.

China-Japan: Japan's stockpile of rare earth elements (REE), if China does not restart REE exporting, could empty by March or April 2011, said Yoshikatsu Nakayama, Japanese vice-minister of the economy, trade and industry, Agence France-Presse reported on 21 October.

China-Germany: German companies have been told by Chinese officials to increase their investments in China if they wish to continue to receive rare earth elements (REE) and two other elements China mines, tungsten and antimony, The New York Times reported on 21 October, citing a spokeswoman for the German engineering federation.

On 21 October, unidentified German industry officials said that Chinese customs officials were for the fourth day blocking the final paperwork approval necessary for REE to be exported to Germany. The officials said China is still exporting REE that had paperwork approved before 18 October.

NIGHTWATCH Comment: The Chinese appear to be using rare earth elements exports for testing economic pressure tactics against potential rivals or adversaries. Rare earth elements are used in many high technology applications.

NIGHTWATCH KGS Home

Phi Beta Iota: This is what happens when government becomes irresponsible, divorced from reality, without a strategic analytic model, and so ideologically insane as to make a lobbyist for Goldman Sachs the National Security Advisor. This all started in the 1970's, it is not new, but now it is close to a fatal sucking chest wound for the Republic.

2010/10/21

Journal: If China Implodes, What Are the Implications?

02 China

… and destroy the Pentagon's dream of finding a new peer competitor to replace the Soviet Union.

Can you give my son a job?

Slavoj Žižek

The Party: The Secret World of China’s Communist Rulers
by Richard McGregor
Allen Lane, 302 pp, £25.00, June 2010,
ISBN 978 1 84614 173 7

. . . . . . .

What we have in China isn’t simply a combination of a private capitalist economy and Communist political power. In one way or another, state and Party own the majority of China’s companies, especially the large ones: it is the Party itself which demands that they perform well in the market. To resolve this apparent contradiction, Deng concocted a unique dual system. ‘As an organisation, the Party sits outside, and above the law,’

. . . . . . .

A true 20th-century Communist never fully accepts the state: he accepts the need for an agency, immune to the law, which has the power to supervise the state’s activities.

. . . . . . .

But China is no Singapore (neither, for that matter, is Singapore): it is not a stable country with an authoritarian regime that guarantees harmony and keeps capitalism under control. Every year, thousands of rebellions by workers, farmers and minorities have to be put down by the police and the army. No wonder official propaganda insists obsessively on the notion of the harmonious society: this very excess bears witness to the opposite, to the threat of chaos and disorder. One should bear in mind the basic rule of Stalinist hermeneutics: since the official media do not openly report trouble, the most reliable way to detect it is to look out for compensatory excesses in state propaganda: the more ‘harmony’ is celebrated, the more chaos and antagonism there is in reality. China is barely under control. It threatens to explode.

Phi Beta Iota: Emphasis added. Losing China as a fraudulent “peer competitor” to justify an outrageously incoherent Pentagon budget that is 60% fraud, waste, and abuse is the least of our worries. If China becomes “the perfect storm” of poverty, infectious disease, environmental degradation, and these spill over to accelerate the remainder of the ten high level threats within and outside China, there are not enough dollars, or trained personnel, or weapons, or anything, to put Pandora back in the box.

2010/10/212010/10/21

Journal: US State Department Clueless on Afghanistan

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

humanitarian news and analysis
a project of the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs

Analysis: Peace moves in Afghanistan as fighting goes on

EXTRACT:

The Taliban have rejected formal contacts with Kabul and dubbed the process “futile propaganda”. They have repeatedly vowed not to engage in any negotiations until all foreign forces leave Afghanistan.

Ordinary Afghans are suffering the most. The conflict has killed and wounded thousands over the past few years, according to the UN.

EXTRACT:

Richard Barrett, coordinator of the UN al-Qaeda-Taliban monitoring team, however, believes the Taliban are “beginning to look at alternatives to fighting”.

The government has dropped the term “moderate Taliban” which it used in previous peace efforts: President Karzai has invited all Taliban, including their reclusive supreme leader Mullah Mohammad Omar, to peace talks.

However, Washington has rejected a role for Mullah Omar in the peace process.

“I can’t imagine Mullah Omar playing a constructive role in Afghanistan… Our focus on Mullah Omar, from a US standpoint, is based on his complicity in support of al-Qaeda that led to the plot of 9/11,” Philip J. Crowley, assistant secretary in the US State Department, told reporters on 14 October.

Read full article…..

Phi Beta Iota: Over the past decade we have observed that at the political level, the US Department of State is next to worthless for two reasons: it does not know the truth of any matter, it simply parrots ideologically designed phrases; and it is consequently incapable of speaking truth to power. The US Government is broken and bankrupt beyond imagination.

2010/10/20

Journal: Flag Officers & Members Fronting for China

02 China, 03 Economy, 10 Security, 11 Society, Commerce, Commercial Intelligence, Government, Military, Mobile

From Intelligence Online:

Suspected by Congress of being linked to the Chinese army, Huawei is working in the U.S. in partnership with Amerilink, which is headed by a former U.S. Navy admiral.

Trusted third party – In a few weeks’ time the U.S. telecoms operator Sprint Nextel is due to award the $2 billion 7-year contract for the development of its 3G network in the United States. To strengthen its chances of winning the lucrative deal, China’s Huawei Technologies, which is regularly suspected of having links to the Chinese People’s Liberation
Army (IOL 619 ), has placed a joint bid with Amerilink, a small U.S. company founded in 2009. The company employs fewer than 20 engineers and is headed by William Owens, a former vice-chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. Amerilink acts as the interface between Huawei and potential U.S. clients. If Huawei were to win the Sprint contract, Amerilink would handle the integration of Chinese equipment in the U.S. operator’s network.

Powerful support – U.S. parliamentarians have been Huawei’s most vociferous opponents: they prevented the Chinese group from buying the U.S. telephony company 3Com in 2008. To defend its partner in Congress, Amerilink recently added two Democrat personalities to its board of directors, the former World Bank president James Wolfenson and Richard Gephardt, president of the House of Representatives ’ Democratic group from 1989 to 2003.

LINK:
http://www.intelligenceonline.com