Italian Troops Denied Access To Intelligence Reports, Minister Says

Richard Owen TimesOnline (UK) October 20, 2009

Italy is denied full access to intelligence assessments in Afghanistan, a restriction that affects its troops' ability to operate safely and hampers allied co-ordination, the Italian Foreign Minister said yesterday.

The lack of co-ordination and pooled intelligence between Nato forces was a widespread problem, Franco Frattini said. “We have repeatedly raised this issue,” he added. …

Mr Frattini said the problem was that intelligence was “the only resource not put at the disposal of everyone”. He said that in Herat, which is under Italian and Spanish command, there was excellent co-ordination with Spanish forces, “but if I want to leave Herat to go to Kandahar it is another matter”.

Continue reading “Journal: Multinational Operations 101”

2009/10/202009/10/20

Journal: How NOT to Decide on Afghanistan

02 China, 04 Inter-State Conflict, 05 Civil War, 05 Iran, 06 Russia, 08 Wild Cards, 10 Security, Ethics, Government, Methods & Process, Military, Policy, Reform, Strategy, Threats

The Real Reason for More Troops in Afghanistan

Michael Gaddy LouRockwell.com October 20, 2009Anyone with a rudimentary knowledge of our quest for empire over the past six decades realizes that Obama’s contemplation of whether to send additional troops to Afghanistan is simply those who control him providing Obama with the opportunity to look “presidential.” The decision to send additional troops was reached prior to the situational comedy of General McChrystal’s leaked “confidential report” to the Washington Post and Obama’s National Security Advisor’s public admonishment of McChrystal’s failure to follow the chain of command. All of this is nothing but a well-rehearsed, though poorly camouflaged hoax. Additional troops will be sent to Afghanistan within a very short period of time and Obama really has no say in the matter. The question is: why?

Continue reading “Journal: How NOT to Decide on Afghanistan”

2009/10/202009/10/20

Journal: Medical Software–Dead on Arrival

07 Health, Civil Society, Ethics, Methods & Process, Mobile

Full Story Online

Medical Records: Stored in the Cloud, Sold on the Open Market

Kim Zetter October 19, 2009

When patients visit a physician or hospital, they know that anyone involved in providing their health care can lawfully see their medical records. But unknown to patients, an increasing number of outside vendors that manage electronic health records also have access to that data, and are reselling the information as a commodity. …

Below Fold More and Second Story

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2009/10/18

Journal: $400 per gallon gas in Afghanistan

03 Economy, 08 Wild Cards, 10 Security, Ethics, Military

Full Story Online

$400 per gallon gas to drive debate over cost of war in Afghanistan

By Roxana Tiron

The Hill

10/15/09

The Pentagon pays an average of $400 to put a gallon of fuel into a combat vehicle or aircraft in Afghanistan. The statistic is likely to play into the escalating debate in Congress over the cost of a war that entered its ninth year last week.

. . . . . .

“It is a number that we were not aware of and it is worrisome,” Rep. John Murtha (D-Pa.), the chairman of the House Appropriations Defense panel, said in an interview with The Hill. “When I heard that figure from the Defense Department, we started looking into it.”

The Pentagon comptroller’s office provided the fuel statistic to the committee staff when it was asked for a breakdown of why every 1,000 troops deployed to Afghanistan costs $1 billion. The Obama administration uses this estimate in calculating the cost of sending more troops to Afghanistan.

2009/10/18

Journal: Goldman Sachs Is Robbing Us Blind

03 Economy, Commercial Intelligence, Ethics, Government

Dylan Ratigan

Anchor of MSNB

Oct. 15, 2009, 5:22 PM

Now this method of “business” is only possible if the government continues to allow these crooked insurance contracts to be written in secret, allows them to hold little or no money in reserve for payment and allows them to sell enough coverage on enough vital national assets that if there is a default — the taxpayer has no choice but to pay.

Needless to say, J.P. Morgan & Co. has never had more revenue and the Goldman Sachs bonus pool has never been bigger.

Considering the $23.7 trillion of taxpayer money being used to support these Corporate Communists one would hope they could at least make a few billion in profits with it. In context, making a few billion risking a few trillion is a rather pathetic return after all.

As we talked about last week – allowing these outdated banks to take control of our government and change the rules so they are protected from the natural competition and reward systems that have created so many innovations in our country, you not only steal from the citizens on behalf of the least worthy but you also doom them by trapping the capital that would have been used to generate new innovation and, most tangibly in our current situation, jobs.

2009/10/18

Journal: “Free Obama” and From What….

08 Wild Cards, Commerce, Ethics, Government, Military, Policies, Reform, Strategy, Threats

Full Op-Ed Online

Obama’s Delusion

David Bromwich

22 October 2009

Afghanistan is the largest and the most difficult crisis Obama confronts away from home. And here the trap was fashioned largely by himself. He said, all through the presidential campaign, that Iraq was the wrong war but Afghanistan was the right one. It was ‘a war of necessity’, he said this summer. And he has implied that he would accept his generals’ definition of the proper scale of such a war. Now it appears that Afghanistan is being lost, indeed that it cannot be controlled with fewer than half a million troops on the ground for a decade or more. The generals are for adding troops, as in Vietnam, in increments of tens of thousands. Their current request was leaked to Bob Woodward, who published it in the Washington Post on 21 September, after Obama asked that it be kept from the public for a longer interval while he deliberated. The leak was an act of military politics if not insubordination; its aim was to show the president the cost of resisting the generals.

Continue reading “Journal: “Free Obama” and From What….”

2009/10/182011/10/22

Journal: Entering the Era of State Capture

Commerce, Ethics, Government, Policies, Reform

The Baseline Scenario

What happened to the global economy and what we can do about it

Who is Carlos Slim?

The US increasingly displays characteristics that we have seen many times in middle-income “emerging markets” – new dimensions of vast inequality, forms of financial instability that benefit the best connected, and consistently easy credit for the privileged. But this raises the question: who exactly is going to dominate our economic and political landscape moving forward?

. . . . . . .

But we are entering a new, more global era of state capture, and the US government (or, more precisely, its credit) was handed over – rather meekly – during the past 12 months.

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Full Op-Ed Online Obama’s Delusion

David Bromwich

Full Op-Ed Online

Obama’s Delusion