Journal: Over $1 trillion Wasted on Wars, Veterans and Families of Veterans Vocal Against Both Elective Wars

02 China, 02 Diplomacy, 04 Inter-State Conflict, 05 Iran, 10 Security, Civil Society, Government, Military

source article

$1 trillion wasted on wars

By KEVIN RAFFERTY

Aug 4, 2010
Special to The Japan Times

HONG KONG — The calculator busily counting out how much money the United States has spent on wars since 2001 has raced past $1 trillion — $1,024 billion plus at the start of August. There is little point in trying to give a more refined figure since the clock ticks remorselessly on, mesmerizingly faster than you can write the sum down, about $260,000 blown away in each passing minute.*

Meanwhile, the wars are being lost rather than won, U.S. and allied soldiers are dying and being maimed every day, tens and sometimes hundreds of innocent civilians are killed daily, and billions of dollars are being wasted and millions of lives being destroyed for no good reason apart from the overweening egos of politicians who are not prepared to admit that they are wrong.

Accompanying Veterans Today article (Obama burning with Bush)

The grim bottom line is that American military and foreign policy is bust and the greatest imperial power the world has ever known is failing. U.S. President Barack Obama promised to be different, but he has become trapped as a gear-lever in the same broken machine.

Phi Beta Iota: Apart from the stunning graphics, click on the photo of the two faces stitched together to get to a compelling article on veterans and families of veterans being against both elective wars, both wars of the rich of no benefit to the public.

Continue reading “Journal: Over $1 trillion Wasted on Wars, Veterans and Families of Veterans Vocal Against Both Elective Wars”

2010/08/05

NIGHTWATCH Extract: India Wrong Force On Maoists

03 India, 05 Civil War, 10 Security, Civil Society, Law Enforcement

India: In eastern India, the Maoist insurgents have neutralized yet another large police contingent. About 70 police personnel are missing on 4 August in the Chhattisgarh forests following a gunfight between heavily-armed Maoists and police in Dantewada area, India, The Times of India reported. Maoists reportedly attacked a search party of the state police in a heavily forested region of Gumiapal, near Kirandul.

The key point of the item is that the India state police forces seem incapable of learning. The location of the attack is the same set of forests where hundreds of police have been killed this year, almost in defiance of central government warnings and advisories. Counterinsurgency means something entirely different in India than it does at Fort Leavenworth.

The Indians continue to rely on policemen and law enforcement forces to handle people who break the law. They consider Army forces and other armed services not appropriate or trained for handling law breakers.

NIGHTWATCH KSG Home

Phi Beta Iota: No government has achieved “whole of government” intelligence, which is a precursor to whole of government planning, programming, and budgeting, and of course to whole of government policy, acquisition, and operations. See the Graphics, especially on Intelligence (Im)Maturity and Whole of Government. Collated graphics at Information Sharing and at Connecting the Dots.

2010/08/032010/08/03

Secrecy News: Afghanistan Deaths, CRS Reports, Weaknesses in Industrial Cyber Sec, Too Many Secrets, Math Discovery

04 Inter-State Conflict, 09 Terrorism, 10 Security, Computer/online security

SECRECY NEWS
from the FAS Project on Government Secrecy
Volume 2010, Issue No. 62
August 2, 2010

Secrecy News Blog: http://www.fas.org/blog/secrecy/

**      AFGHANISTAN CASUALTIES, AND MORE FROM CRS
**      WEAKNESSES IN INDUSTRIAL CYBER SECURITY DESCRIBED
**      TOO MANY SECRETS, THE GREATEST MATH DISCOVERY, AND MORE

AFGHANISTAN CASUALTIES, AND MORE FROM CRS

Sixty-six American troops died in Afghanistan in July, making it the deadliest month for U.S. forces in the Afghanistan War thus far, the Washington Post and others reported.

Casualties of the Afghanistan War have recently been tabulated by the Congressional Research Service, including statistics on American forces, of whom around 1100 have been killed, as well as allied forces, and Afghan civilians. Although the three week old CRS report does not include the very latest figures, it provides links to official and unofficial sources of casualty information that are regularly updated. See “Afghanistan Casualties: Military Forces and Civilians,” July 12, 2010.

A number of other noteworthy new CRS reports that have not been made readily available to the public were obtained by Secrecy News, including these (all pdf):

Continue reading “Secrecy News: Afghanistan Deaths, CRS Reports, Weaknesses in Industrial Cyber Sec, Too Many Secrets, Math Discovery”

2010/08/012010/08/01

CrisisGroup’s CrisisWatch Monthly Report N°84, 1 Aug 2010

04 Inter-State Conflict, 08 Wild Cards, 09 Terrorism, 10 Security, CrisisWatch reports

CrisisWatch N°84

Two actual or potential conflict situations around the world deteriorated and one improved in July 2010, according to the new issue of the International Crisis Group’s monthly bulletin CrisisWatch released today.

July 2010 TRENDS

Deteriorated Situations
Rwanda, Somalia

Improved Situations
Somaliland

Continue reading “CrisisGroup’s CrisisWatch Monthly Report N°84, 1 Aug 2010”

2010/08/01

Journal: Just How Important is the WikiLeaks AF Dump?

04 Inter-State Conflict, 05 Civil War, 07 Other Atrocities, 08 Wild Cards, 10 Security, Analysis, Budgets & Funding, InfoOps (IO), Intelligence (government), Journalism/Free-Press/Censorship, Methods & Process, Misinformation & Propaganda, Officers Call, Reform, Secrecy & Politics of Secrecy

editor spinney time — Chuck Spinney Recommends

OP-ED COLUMNIST

Kiss This War Goodbye

By FRANK RICH, New York Times, July 31, 2010

A version of this op-ed appeared in print on August 1, 2010, on page WK8 of the New York edition.

IT was on a Sunday morning, June 13, 1971, that The Times published its first installment of the Pentagon Papers. Few readers may have been more excited than a circle of aspiring undergraduate journalists who’d worked at The Harvard Crimson. Though the identity of The Times’s source wouldn’t eke out for several days, we knew the whistle-blower had to be Daniel Ellsberg, an intense research fellow at M.I.T. and former Robert McNamara acolyte who’d become an antiwar activist around Boston. We recognized the papers’ contents, as reported in The Times, because we’d heard the war stories from the loquacious Ellsberg himself.

. . . . . . .

What was often forgotten last week is that the Pentagon Papers had no game-changing news about that war either and also described events predating the then-current president.

. . . . . . .

The papers’ punch was in the many inside details they added to the war’s chronicle over four previous administrations and, especially, in their shocking and irrefutable evidence that Nixon’s immediate predecessor, Lyndon Johnson, had systematically lied to the country about his intentions and the war’s progress.

FULL ANALYSIS ONLINE

2010/07/302010/07/30

Journal: Zionists & Neocons Ramp for War on Iran

04 Inter-State Conflict, 05 Iran, 07 Other Atrocities, 08 Wild Cards, 10 Security, 11 Society

Neocon Nutballs Ramp Up Campaign

Bomb Iran?

By GARETH PORTER

Reuel Marc Gerecht’s screed in the Weekly Standard seeking to justify an Israeli bombing attack on Iran coincides with the opening of the new Israel lobby campaign marked by the introduction of House Resolution 1553 expressing full support for such an Israeli attack.

What is important to understand about this campaign is that the aim of Gerecht and of the right-wing government of Benjamin Netanyahu is to support an attack by Israel so that the United States can be drawn into direct, full-scale war with Iran.

FULL STORY AT COUNTERPUNCH

Phi Beta Iota: Daniel Elsberg had it right lecturing to Henry Kissinger, our second most important war criminal after Dick Cheney: these people have become like morons, totally disconnected from reality or the public interest. For their total game plan, in which they thought they could “roll up” the Middle East, see Review: Endgame–The Blueprint for Victory in the War on Terror. Gerecht used to be a fairly sensible accomplished Case Officer (C/O). We speculate they've given him dual citizenship as part of an offer he just could not refuse. His piece is world-class idiocy.

2010/07/302010/07/30

Event: 10-12 Sept 2010, Berlin, Interdependence Day

02 Diplomacy, 10 Security, Academia, Civil Society, Collective Intelligence, Government, Non-Governmental, Peace Intelligence

Event page

Berlin, Germany 2010

In 2010 Interdependence Day will be celebrated in a dynamic global city and cultural melting pot at the heart of Europe.

> INTERDEPENDENCE DAY

In a world where global interdependence is not simply an aspiration of idealists, but a brute fact of the forces that bind us together— global warming, financial capital, AIDS, telecommunications, crime, migration, and terrorism—many people still think in narrow, insular terms.

Reality is global, but consciousness too often remains local — constrained by town and nation.

In the year 2000, a small group of scholars, civic and political leaders, and artists from a dozen nations met to design a program that might help raise consciousness around the realities and possibilities of interdependence. Their efforts were given impetus by the tragic events of September 11, 2001, and the group created a project that would:

> Make September 12, the day following the memorial of 9/11, an international celebration of interdependence “Interdependence Day”

> Draw up a “Declaration of Interdependence”, making clear that both liberty and security require cooperation among peoples and nations and can no longer be secured by sovereign nations working unilaterally;

> Develop a Civic Interdependence Curriculum that would make interdependence a central concept in Civics and Social Studies programs in middle and high schools in as many schools around the world as possible.