Policies – Page 725 – Public Intelligence Blog

photo tarpley new — Webster Griffin Tarpley

Webster G. Tarpley

March 3, 2010

It has been evident for some time that the ongoing speculative attack on Greece, along with such other countries as Spain, Ireland, Portugal, and Italy, was not primarily a reflection of their economic fundamentals, nor yet a spontaneous movement of “the market,” but rather an orchestrated action of economic warfare.

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Phi Beta Iota: There is no question but that Dr. Tarpley is correct at the moment, the hedge funds are waging economic war on Europe, are out of control, and need to be stomped down. HOWEVER, what is not evident in his longer report is the fact that Europe welcomed help from Goldman Sachs and others in concealing its long-term debt, and it is for this reason that the hedge funds now have an “information advantage” that gives them a “sure bet” against the Euro generally and Greece specifically. Until the United Nations (UN), the European Union (EU), the African Union (AU), the Union of South American Nations (UNASUR), and the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO)–to name just a few–get a grip on the totality of the information relevant to their safety, security, and efficiency, predatory capitalism, virtual colonialism, and unilateral militarism will continue to rule. Our new book, INTELLIGENCE for EARTH: Clarity, Diversity, Integrity, & Sustainability, provides a game plan for creating a prosperous world at peace by arming the UN, EU, AU, UNASUR, and SCO with the means to do multicultural, multifunctional information-sharing and sense-making. Our favorite line from the book: a woman with a cell phone is vastly more powerful than a man with a gun.

2010/03/032010/03/03

True Cost: Cost of food-borne illnesses is deemed much higher than earlier estimates

01 Agriculture, 07 Health, 12 Water, Commerce, Cultural Intelligence, Earth Intelligence, Ethics, Government

Among the food scares in recent years was a deadly E. coli outbreak tied to spinach. In most cases, it's unknown how or why people get ill from what they eat. (Justin Sullivan / Getty Images / September 15, 2006)

Phi Beta Iota: The second sentence is ignorant. It is well-known that between industrial farming with zero regard for either the spill-over of animal shit into fields growing fruits and vegatables, combined with an exotic array of antibiotics for the animals (living in ghetto conditions) and pesticides for the plants, most of which have NOT been tested and are NOT regulated because of multiple legal loopholes, most of what we eat is mostly comprised of oil and corn and neither safe nor nutritious. Corporate irresponsibility survives because government complacency has been purchased. This is a superb example of “true cost” economics that will hit the marketplace like a tsunami in the next five years. When man-made illnesses are combined with over-kill on man-made antibiotics, we end up with untreatable bacterial and other diseases, all of this forecast in the strongest possible terms in the past 20 years.

The below book selections are pulled from Chapter 20 on 21^st Century Counterintelligence: Evaluating the Health of the Nation. The fragementation of knowledge, and the ignorance of the media, the government, and the academy are now profoundly pathological.

Continue reading “True Cost: Cost of food-borne illnesses is deemed much higher than earlier estimates”

2010/03/022010/03/02

Journal: Robert Baer on Transparency of Assassinations

07 Other Atrocities, 09 Terrorism, 10 Security, Cultural Intelligence, Government, Peace Intelligence

A Perfectly Framed Assassination

Stepped-up surveillance technology may be tipping the scales in the cat-and-mouse game between spies and their targets. Robert Baer on the current state of spycraft.

EXTRACT:

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I can only speculate about where exactly the hit went wrong. But I would guess the assassins failed to account for the marked advance in technology. Not only were there closed-circuit TV cameras in the hotel where Mr. Mabhouh was assassinated and at the airport, but Dubai has at its fingertips the best security consultants in the world. The consultants merely had to run advanced software through all of Dubai's digital data before, during and after the assassination to connect the assassins in time and place. For instance, a search of all cellular phone calls made in and around the hotel where Mr. Mabhouh was assassinated would show who had called the same number—reportedly a command post in Vienna. It would only be a matter then of tracking when and where calls were made from these phones, tying them to hotels where the team was operating or staying.

Phi Beta Iota: Robert Baer, who spoke to the international OSINT conference before the movie was made about his life as a case officer, is a most valued colleague who apart from being a speaker of truth and an author, has doubts about the 9/11 Commission and the general veracity of the U.S. Government. He is a “tough love” patriot. His newest opinion piece exposes the rapidly narrowing space for covert actions including assassinations and other behaviors that can no longer pass undetected. As we pointed out a decade ago, it is no longer possible to create solid covers–instead of stealing or misappropriating them, we have been preaching 1) hire mid-career officers who have already built their covers unwittingly, and keep them in those real-world covers; and 2) stop doing the stupid shit. 95% of intelligence (decision-support) should b e legal and ethical. All its takes is integrity and a leadership that actually knows something about full-spectrum intelligence and the point of it all: to create a Smart Nation.

2010/03/02

Journal: Suicide Bomber–CIA Cluster a Gift from God

08 Wild Cards, 09 Terrorism, 10 Security, Cultural Intelligence, Government

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Bomber Called C.I.A. Target Gift From God

By SCOTT SHANE February 28, 2010

In a posthumously released video message, the suicide bomber who killed seven C.I.A. employees on Dec. 30 said that his original target had been his handler from Jordanian intelligence, and that an invitation to meet C.I.A. officers at a remote base in Afghanistan had been an unexpected boon.

“We planned for something but got a bigger gift, a gift from Allah, who brought us, through his accompaniment, a valuable prey: Americans, and from the C.I.A.,” said the bomber, Humam Khalil Abu Mulal al-Balawi, a Jordanian physician who carried out the attack, in a 44-minute video posted on extremist Web sites Sunday.

FOR THE RECORD: Director Panetta has either not seen (because his staff filters his incoming) or has ignored direct offers of help, including one faxed to every seventh floor fax around his personal office.

Phi Beta Iota: CIA Director Leon Panetta is in way over his head, he's not even useful to the President, much less anyone else. He has been deceived by his own people and has no idea how many sordid details of incompetence and plain misrepresentation are being withheld from him. CIA has too many complacent over-promoted people who don't speak a foreign language, don't really understand foreign cultures, and have gotten by for decades on scraps from the table of foreign liaison and the tried and true practice of pretending that anyone who will take money is a valuable asset–all the while ignoring open sources and keeping the analysts locked in a closet far removed from reality. His whining about public and professional observations of “poor tradecraft” inspired a riposte on “poor management.” A careful examination of the individuals who died would have shown that only two of them should have been there at all, the Jordanian and one case officer–analysts, especially materal women with no field or combat experience, have no business being on the front lines. By the by, has anyone introduced secure video teleconferencing to the process of analyst-asset interaction? CIA is once again playing the numbers game, pretending that warm bodies and mediocre meaningless reports add up to “presence.” Slow burn, once again.

Journal: CIA as Poster Child For Dull US Intelligence

Journal: CIA’s Poor Tradecraft AND Poor Management

2010/03/01

Journal: False Consciousness, False Government?

Civil Society, Collective Intelligence, Ethics, Policies

My good friend Werther has been beavering away again in the US manure pile and this time has resurrected Engels' theory of False Consciousness to help explain the mismatch between ideology and reality that has become enshrined in contemporary American political psychology.

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False Consciousness

By Werther*

“If they can get you asking the wrong questions, they don't have to worry about the answers.”

— Thomas Pynchon, Gravity's Rainbow

EXTRACTS:

Or so the conventional wisdom.

Barry Lynn of the New America Foundation has written an interesting refutation of that widely held notion. [1] He asserts that the last 30 years' of so-called free market doctrine have not aided, but rather retarded the cause of small business. Intriguingly, he cites, but does not expand upon, the following finding: “One recent study, based on data compiled by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, placed the United States second to last out of 22 rich nations in the percentage of workers who run their own businesses. Only Luxembourg ranked lower.” . . .

Lynn argues that a key inflection point in government policy towards small business came in 1981, when the Reagan administration essentially stopped enforcing anti-monopoly and small business-protection statutes.

Phi Beta Iota: Reagan, whom we generally admired, also busted labor with his unconstitutional use of the military to break the air-traffic controller strike. We ureg one an all to read the entire Op Ed and the three linked references. American anti-intellectualism and American delusion are cresting at precisely the time we need ground-truth, truth at any cost.

2010/03/012010/03/01

Journal: President Lacks Intelligence on Nuclear Option–Actually, He Lacks Intelligence (Decision-Support) on EVERYTHING

05 Energy, Commercial Intelligence, Earth Intelligence

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Four Nuclear Myths: A Commentary on Stewart Brand's Whole Earth Discipline and on Similar Writings

AUTHOR: Lovins, Amory
DOCUMENT ID: 2009-09
YEAR: 2009
DOCUMENT TYPE: Journal or Magazine Article
PUBLISHER: RMI

Public discussions of nuclear power, and a surprising number of articles in peer-reviewed journals, are increasingly based on four notions unfounded in fact or logic:

1. variable renewable sources of electricity (windpower and photovoltaics) can provide little or no reliable electricity because they are not ³baseload² the time;

2. those renewable sources require such enormous amounts of land, hundreds of times more than nuclear power does, that they¹re environmentally unacceptable;

3. all options, including nuclear power, are needed to combat climate change; and

4. nuclear power¹s economics matter little because governments must use it anyway to protect the climate.

Continue reading “Journal: President Lacks Intelligence on Nuclear Option–Actually, He Lacks Intelligence (Decision-Support) on EVERYTHING”

2010/02/252010/02/25

NIGHTWATCH: Pakistani Education as Weapon Against USA–The Failure of US Militarization

04 Education

a madrassa — Pakistan: Memorizing the Qur’an, but not learning multiplication or even how to write

Pakistan: Special note. The second part of yesterday’s PBS show Frontline concerned the condition of the public school system in Pakistan. It has collapsed in nearly every respect.

The video report noted that nearly half of the 65 million school age kids in Pakistan do not attend public schools. It did not follow-up that datum to report that a large percentage of the children not in public school learn to read and write in religious schools associated with mosque. The madrasah teaches boys and girls to read, write and recite the Quran, among other basics. In many regions and cities of Pakistan, attendance at the madrasah is the only path to semi-literacy for the children of the poor.

The collapse of the public school system has been the subject of editorials and studies for decades. The video report was not newsworthy on that account. It was significant that the overcrowded, open air school that was the subject of the video is in Lahore, one of the largest cities of Pakistan. The visual setting looked like a remote tribal village, not part of a large urban center.

Of great interest were the reporter’s brief interviews with a pre-teen Pakistani girl who attended the open air school in Lahore. The girl believed in education and said she wanted to be a teacher. Concerning the US, she said her teacher told her to hate America.

Continue reading “NIGHTWATCH: Pakistani Education as Weapon Against USA–The Failure of US Militarization”

Category: Policies

Journal: Hedge Funds Attack European Economies