Category: 07 Other Atrocities

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John Robb: Micro Drones Threaten US Citizens at Home

07 Other Atrocities, 10 Security, 11 Society, Blog Wisdom, Civil Society, Corruption, Counter-Oppression/Counter-Dictatorship Practices, DHS, Director of National Intelligence et al (IC), DoD, Government, IO Deeds of War, Law Enforcement, Military
John Robb

DRONES and US Internal Security

Signature strikes target groups of men believed to be militants associated with terrorist groups, but whose identities aren't always known. The bulk of CIA's drone strikes are signature strikes.  Wall Street Journal.

Drones are changing the dynamics of warfare in very scary ways.  They make oppression much easier (and cost-effective).

Click on Image to Enlarge

To recap:  Drones are extremely cost effective vs. ground/air assets (particularly in that with drones, operators aren't put at risk).  They also enable extremely centralized command and control (as in: operations can be micro-manged in Washington, down to the decision to kill).  In sum, a small number of people in Washington DC can control/operate a vast 24×7 killing field for very few $$.

Here's how they are changing warfare:

  • An Assassination List.  Drones, in combination with other forms of electronic surveillance, make it easy to rapidly find and kill people (even in non-permissive areas).  As a result, assassination of threats has become the easy solution to many problems.  It has become so popular that the process has become bureaucratized and automated through the development of an assassination list.  The US President has one, and he can put US citizens on it via a simple, non-judicial, bureaucratic process.
  • Signature Strikes.  The current practice of the CIA in Pakistan is to kill groups of people that “look” like terrorists or guerrillas.  Exactly what a group of people needs to do, wear, or be to trigger the signature of a terrorist/guerrilla group is unknown.  The Pakistani authorities are only told about strikes that kill more than 20 people.   While these strikes have generated some push-back from Pakistani press/politicians, it's relatively small given the number of people killed.
  • Borders melt.  Nearly every country in the world, except a few key allies, can be penetrated with drones.  In most cases, they don't know they've been penetrated.  In others, there's nothing they can do to prevent it.  The big barrier to cross border special ops or air force hits/strikes in the past was the chance that operators would be captured.  That's not true anymore.  So, in effect, anybody can be killed nearly anywhere at anytime by a flip of a switch.

What's Next?

It's a pretty slippery slope from here.  The simple answer is that US practice we see at work in Pakistan will eventually become common place in Mexico, Central America, and Northern Africa.  However, the more interesting answer is how it gets applied to US internal security when the US/global economy crumps into depression, the US government goes bankrupt, and the current system loses much of its remaining legitimacy.  In that scenario:

  • any armed group would instantly fit the signature of terrorists/guerrillas (the further you are away from an urban zone, the easier a target you will be),
  • even a mildly radical post to a blog, Facebook or Twitter ( particularly if it could lead to a flashmob or an occupy style protest) would invite inclusion on the drone assassination list (in that case, the occasional flash of a car being blown up by a drone patrolling a highway and IDing a listed driver, will become common),
  • drone to citizen ratios will rise to 100:1 as new micro-drones cut cost and new software allows DHS control centers to manage large region wide “drone clouds.”
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John Robb: Greece, MF Global, & Crony Capitalism

07 Other Atrocities, 10 Transnational Crime, Commerce, Corruption, Government, Money, Banks & Concentrated Wealth, Power Behind-the-Scenes/Special Interests
John Robb

JOURNAL: Greece, MF Global and Crony Capitalism

The slow motion bankruptcy of MF global and Greece should prove we're still on the brink of an economic meltdown that will likely result in a global depression.  Why?  These events demonstate how the global economy, like the Communist system before it, is run by a small group of central planners (that allocate the world's collective capital).  These planners:

  • Make lots of VERY bad decisions.  Wall Street and EU planners routinely attempt to sink the entire economic and financial system with excessive leverage and risk.  These systemic threats have become so commonplace now, it's nearly inevitable that one will cause a major collapse.
  • Become morally and ethically depraved.   They operate on a continuous stream of fraud and lies.  Too many instances to count.  These planners are unencumbered by ethical or cultural norms.  They actually believe these rules are below them.  In reality, by doing so, these planners are eviscerating their own decision making (i.e. in terms of an  OODA loop, they aren't orienting themselves to the deep/rich cultural experience these rules represent).
  • Completely arrogant and unapologetic.  They are never wrong.  Nobody could have foreseen it.  It's a one in 10,000 year event.

Of course, this situation will persist until it doesn't.  At that point, we'll be in for a long rebuilding process.

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Chuck Spinney: William Pfaff on USA Gone Awry

07 Other Atrocities, 09 Justice, 11 Society, Articles & Chapters, Civil Society, Commerce, Commercial Intelligence, Corruption, Counter-Oppression/Counter-Dictatorship Practices, Cultural Intelligence, Government, Money, Banks & Concentrated Wealth, Power Behind-the-Scenes/Special Interests
Chuck Spinney

Good summary of the American sickness.

One Nation, Gone Awry

William Pfaff – truthdig – 02/11/11

The theme of most political and social commentary is that things are more complicated than you think. For once, I wish to write that things are simpler than you think. This concerns two matters at the core of the present American political crisis.

The first is that control over the government has passed all but completely into the hands of business corporations. The country has become a plutocracy. This has occurred because corporations are the principal supplier of funds essential to the election of federal officials—the president and the members of the United States Senate and House of Representatives, and through them, the members of the Supreme Court and the rest of the federal judiciary, all of whom are nominated and confirmed by the elected officials of the executive and legislative branches of the government.

. . . . . . .

I spoke of a second source of American crisis to which there is a simple solution, an intellectual solution, which to impose would require conversion of the hard hearts and biased minds of a sizable part of the international economic community (at least that part of it educated at the University of Chicago since the Second World War), as well as a near-revolutionary change in how the American government presently functions (see above). The crisis is easily described as the 1 percent problem. One percent of the American population receives income equivalent to the other 99 percent put together.

This is caused by the consensus decision of the economists and business schools to define profit as the sole criterion of corporation efficiency and public (and civic) worth. The automatic consequence of this has been the de-industrialization of the United States, the export of its manufacturing capacity, unemployment in the U.S. comparable to that of the Great Depression, poverty levels with no modern American precedent, and the moral corruption of American politics.

Read full article.

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Matt Taibbi: Bloomberg’s Marie Antoinette Moment

03 Economy, 07 Other Atrocities, 11 Society, Civil Society, Commerce, Commercial Intelligence, Corruption, Cultural Intelligence, Government, Misinformation & Propaganda, Money, Banks & Concentrated Wealth
Matt Taibbi

Mike Bloomberg's Marie Antoinette Moment

Rolling Stone, November 3, 11:00 AM ET

Last year I had a chance to see New York Mayor Mike Bloomberg up close at the Huffington Post’s “Game Changers” event. I was standing right behind the guy when he was introduced by Nora Ephron, and watched as the would-be third party powerhouse wowed the liberal crowd with one zinger after another.

Includes short video.

EXTRACT:

The whole game was based on one new innovation: the derivative instruments like CDOs that allowed them to take junk-rated home loans and turn them into AAA-rated instruments. It was not Barney Frank who made it possible for Goldman, Sachs to sell the home loan of an occasionally-employed janitor in Oakland or Detroit as something just as safe as, and more profitable than, a United States Treasury Bill. This was something they cooked up entirely by themselves and developed solely with the aim of making more money.

Read full skewering of Mike Bloomberg.

See Also:

Review: Griftopia–Bubble Machines, Vampire Squids, and the Long Con That Is Breaking America

Matt Taibbi: The Real Housewives Of Wall Street–How Morgan Stanley Wives Christy Mack & Susan Karches Ripped Off Taxpayers In Geithner-Bernanke Bailout Scheme

Why Isn’t Wall Street in Jail? + US Fraud RECAP

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Richard Wright: Bill Moyers on Politicians and Money Launderers in the Trafficking of Power and Policy

07 Other Atrocities, 09 Justice, Civil Society, Corruption, Counter-Oppression/Counter-Dictatorship Practices, Cultural Intelligence, Government, Legislation, Money, Banks & Concentrated Wealth, Power Behind-the-Scenes/Special Interests
Richard Wright

Moyers is a sanctimonious preacher who sometimes speaks the truth.

Bill Moyers: “Our Politicians Are Money Launderers in the Trafficking of Power and Policy”

Remarks as Prepared for Delivery
Public Citizen 40th Gala
Washington, DC
October 20, 2011

I am honored to share this occasion with you. No one beyond your collegial inner circle appreciates more than I do what you have stood for over these 40 years, or is more aware of the battles you have fought, the victories you have won, and the passion for democracy that still courses through your veins. The great progressive of a century ago, Robert LaFollette of Wisconsin – a Republican, by the way – believed that “Democracy is a life; and involves constant struggle.” Democracy has been your life for four decades now, and would have been even more imperiled today if you had not stayed the course.

VIDEO (21:15):  Bill Moyers keynote at Public Citizen's 40th Anniversary Gala

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Marcus Aurelius: Death Notice for Counterintelligence

07 Other Atrocities, 10 Security, Corruption, Director of National Intelligence et al (IC), DoD, Government, Intelligence (government), IO Impotency, Military, Officers Call
Marcus Aurelius

Combat Commanders Gain Control Of Counterintelligence Ops

By Carlo Munoz

AOL Defense, November 1, 2011

Washington: The Pentagon is offering field commanders control of counterintelligence operations to cope with the never-ceasing efforts by countries such as China, Iran and Israel to gain access to classified information and technology.

Undersecretary of Defense for Intelligence Mike Vickers approved the plan in an Oct. 5 memorandum. Groups such as Central Command and Special Operations Command can now choose to do their own CI work within their organizations, according to the memo. Formal investigations are still handled by the services.

“We gave the [combat commands] an option to develop an organic CI capability… or to rely on [the Defense Department],” Pentagon spokesman Lt. Col. James Gregory said. “We did not want to legislate either way but instead wanted to give [them] an option.” The decision comes as the Pentagon and intelligence community are preparing for a $25 billion to $40 billion budget cut over the next decade.

Read full article.

Phi Beta Iota:  At the tactical level intelligence has always been the runt, generally one rank down from operations, and within intelligence, counterintelligence is where the runts of the runts go.  Marty Hurwitz destroyed tactical intelligence with his consolidation of the General Defense Intelligence Program (GDIP) and the well-intentioned but badly conceived Joint Intelligence Center (JIC) concept.  While Jim Clapper destroyed Marty Hurwitz, he did not make tactical intelligence  (counterintelligence silent as in non-existent) healthy again, going on to make national consolidation every worse.  There is a huge difference between security and defensive counterintelligence – they are not the same but ignorant commanders will treat them as one.  There is a huge difference between defensive counterintelligence and offensive counterintelligence – no one in the US national intelligence community is competent as offensive counterintelligence, and the commanders will be oblivious to this until such time as we finally eliminate the regional commands and reset national defense and multinational information-sharing and sense-making.  The budget cuts are trivial – $40 billion over ten years is $4 billion a year, that is a 4% cut on $90 billion a year, while at least 50% of what the IC spends now is fraud, waste, and abuse, 70% of that on contractor vapor-ware.  The greatest enemy of America is a dishonest intelligence community that cannot do holistic analytics relevant to everything we need to know.

More practically, COCOMs consist of headquarters staffs and operational units sourced from the Services.  Counterintelligence is currently a functional support service provided to the COCOMs by the Services and perhaps DIA.  I know of no joint CI force structure designed for COCOMs.  So, for COCOMs to run their own CI operations, they will require resources to be sourced, either permanently or temporarily, from the Services or from DIA, which itself gets its military personnel from the Services and competes with the rest of the Intelligence Community to hire civilians.  That would serve principally to exacerbate existing shortages in counterintelligence personnel and force structure.  In other words, Mike Vickers is not leading, he is scamming.

noble gold