Chuck Spinney: UK Dunkirk, USA Long Walk Away from Afghanistan – the Military-Industrial Scam is to “Reset, Rebuy, Retrench”

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Chuck Spinney

… How the Military – Industrial – Congressional Complex (MICC) Will Win By Losing

The old adage that it is easy to get into Afghanistan but painful to leave is true for many reasons — here is a big one described in 27 November issue of the Daily Mirror [also attached below] — the British army  plans to use Russian railways, built by the Tsars 140 years ago, to return hundreds of millions of pounds worth of equipment in Afghanistan via a landroute to the English Channel.

If you think the horror described in the Daily Mirror report is bad, think about the US options: Given our deteriorating relations with Pakistan, the long, highly vulnerable land route out of Afghanistan, thru the Bolan and Khyber passes, and then down the road system of the Indus Valley in Pakistan to its port of Karachi, is becoming increasingly problematic.

An optional US exit strategy would be an agonizing variation of the Dunkirk option described in the Daily Mirror report plus a sea lift, perhaps via transshipment points in Black Sea ports, like Batumi in Georgia, or Novorossiysk or Sochi in southern Russia, or even Odessa in the Ukraine (which at least would avoid the problem of different railroad gauges).

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David Swansson: When the World Outlawed War – A Model for Occupy to Achieve Electoral Reform Act of 2012

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David Swanson

When the World Outlawed War: An Interview with David Swanson

For those who know war only through television, criminalizing it sounds like proposing to criminalize government. But there was a time when the masses made war illegal.
Bruce E. Levine
Alternet, November 21, 2011

David Swanson’s recently released book, When the World Outlawed War, tells the story of how the highly energized peace movement in the 1920s, supported by an overwhelming majority of U.S. citizens from every level of society, was able to push politicians into something quite remarkable—the Kellogg-Briand Pact and the renunciation of war as an instrument of national policy. The 1920s “War Outlawry” movement in the United States was so popular that most politicians could not afford to oppose it.

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David Swanson, since serving as press secretary in Dennis Kucinich’s 2004 presidential campaign, has emerged as one of the leading anti-war activists in the United States. While Swanson has fought against the U.S. wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and tried to alert Americans to the fact that U.S. military spending is the source of most of our economic problems, his anti-war activism goes much deeper. He wants to stigmatize militarist politicians as criminals. In his previous book War is a Lie, Swanson made the case for the abolition of war as an instrument of national policy, and When the World Outlawed War provides an historical example of just how powerful war abolitionism can be.

Bruce Levine: At a college lecture that you recently gave, you asked the students and professors if they believed war was illegal or if they had ever heard of the Kellogg-Briand Pact, and only about 2 or 3 percent of a large group raised their hands. But what really seems to have disturbed you is when you asked if war should be illegal, and only 5 percent thought that it should be.

Full Text Below for Google Translate

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Richard Wright: More on CIA’s Continuing Implosion

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Richard Wright

26 November 2011

Robert,

Not surprisingly your feelings about CIA [Robert Steele: Iran Arrests Twelve CIA Agents] have been echoed by Bob Baer whose principal area of operations was the Levant. As in this ABC interview: Former CIA Agent: U.S. Has Lost Its Spy Mojo  [includes short video]

“But former senior CIA officer Robert Baer told ABC News this week that the loss of assets was more than a mere setback, and not an isolated incident but part of a disturbing pattern.

“When you lose your entire station, either in Tehran or Beirut, that's a catastrophe,” said Bob Baer, a legendary CIA agent whose Middle East exploits were fictionalized in the George Clooney film “Syriana.” Baer said the disaster was due in part to a new generation of agents that has forgotten, or never learned, the traditional methods of intelligence gathering.

  “They don't understand tradecraft,” Baer said. “And we have lost our touch in espionage.”” (Emphasis mine)

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Chuck Spinney: Good, Bizarre, and Ugly

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Chuck Spinney

WEEKEND EDITION NOVEMBER 25-27, 2011

The Good, the Bizarre and the Ugly

AF-PAK Sitrep

by FRANKLIN C. SPINNEY, Counterpunch

It is becoming increasingly clear that the AF-PAK war will end in yet another grand strategic defeat for the United States.  To date, President Obama, has been able to distract attention from this issue, but given the stakes in 2012, that dodge is unlikely to last. Get ready for an ugly debate over “who lost the Afghan War.”

To those readers who disagree with my opening line, I urge you to study Anthony Cordersman’s most recent situation report on the AF-PAK War, THE AFGHANISTAN- PAKISTAN WAR AT THE END OF 2011: Strategic Failure? Talk Without Hope? Tactical Success? Spend Not Build (And Then Stop Spending)?  It was issued by the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington on November 15.  Reading the report is heavy slogging but I urge readers to download and examine it — at the very least, take a few minutes  to read the executive summary.

Now compare Cordesman’s systematic, detailed, and workmanlike analysis to the bizarre obscurantism peddled one week later, on 22 November, co-authored by Michael O’Hanlon (Brookings Institution) and former Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz (American Enterprise Institute) in a Wall Street Journal op-ed, entitled Defining Victory in Afghanistan.

O’Hanlon and Wolfowitz posit the bizarre thesis that the admittedly less than successful outcome against the FARC guerrillas in Columbia is a favorable model for justifying continuing business as usual in Afghanistan. Viewed through the refractions of their Columbian lens, O’Hanlon and Wolfowitz conclude, “Our current exit strategy of reducing American troops to 68,000 by the end of next summer and transferring full security responsibility to Afghan forces by 2014 is working. In a war where the U.S. has demonstrated remarkable strategic patience, we need to stay patient and resolute.”

Are O’Hanlon and Wolfowitz living on the same planet as Cordesman or do they live in some kind of parallel universe?

I submit it is latter. Here’s why –

Read full analysis.

Chuck Spinney: Averting Civil War in Syria

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Chuck Spinney

Patrick Seale is one of the finest and most experienced writers now reporting on the Middle East

Averting Civil War in Syria

by Patrick Seale

Agence Global, 22 Nov 2011

Syria is heading for a bloody sectarian civil war. The mutual kidnappings, torture, beheadings and displacement of populations taking place between the Sunni and Alawi communities in the central city of Homs — often described as “the capital of the revolution” — send a fearsome signal of what might be in store for the rest of the country.

To avert this descent into hell must surely be the immediate priority of Arab leaders and the international community.

The Iraqi example next door is there for all to see. The Anglo-American invasion destroyed a major Arab country. The country’s institutions and infrastructure were shattered; sectarian demons were released, triggering a civil war. Hundreds of thousands died and millions were displaced from their homes or forced to flee abroad. The country was dismembered as the Kurds established their own semi-independent statelet.

Syria needs the intervention of a high-powered, neutral, contact group to stop the killing on both sides.

Read more.

Reference: Jan Herring How Much Is Your Competitive Intelligence Worth? [Full Text Online for Google Translate] Referencia: Jan Herring ¿Cuánto vale tu Inteligencia Competitiva? [Texto completo en línea de Google Translate]

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Source

Phi Beta Iota:  This article, written in 2007, remains the standard in the field for both brevity and authoritativeness.

Business Intelligence is data mining, not intelligence.  Competitive Intelligence focuses on competitors and does not do 360 degree holistic analytics.

The modern term for a full service program is Commercial Intelligence, which uses only open sources and ethical methods.  It should not be confused with secret government intelligence or with illegal industrial espionage.

Mr. Herring is also the creator of the now globally-recognized “Herring Triangle” graphic of four levels of commercial intelligence and their relative costs.

Herring Triangulo en Espanol

Herring Triangle as Published in New Craft of Intelligence

Full Text Below the Line for Google Translate

Continue reading “Reference: Jan Herring How Much Is Your Competitive Intelligence Worth? [Full Text Online for Google Translate] Referencia: Jan Herring ¿Cuánto vale tu Inteligencia Competitiva? [Texto completo en línea de Google Translate]”

Chuck Spinney: Paris-Berlin-Moscow Axis Reinstated

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Chuck Spinney

The Paris-Berlin-Moscow Axis Back Again

by Immanuel Wallerstein

It always amazes me how the world's politicians and media spend most of their energy debating geopolitical prospects that are not going to happen, while ignoring major developments that are happening.

Here is a list of the most important coming non-events that we have been loudly debating and analyzing: Israel is not going to bomb Iran. The euro is not going to disappear. Outside powers are not going to engage in military action inside Syria. The upsurge of worldwide popular unrest is not going to fade away.

Meanwhile, to minimal serious coverage in the media and on the internet, the Nord Stream was inaugurated in Lubmin on Germany's Baltic Coast on Nov. 8 in the presence of Pres. Medvedev of Russia and the prime ministers of Germany, France, and the Netherlands, plus the director of Gazprom, Russia's gas exporter, and the European Union's Energy Commissioner. This is a geopolitical game-changer, unlike all the widely discussed non-events that are not going to happen.

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