Chuck Spinney: From Algeria to Libya –Lessons Not Learned + USG CIA Web of Deceit in Arabia RECAP

07 Other Atrocities, 09 Justice, Corruption, Counter-Oppression/Counter-Dictatorship Practices, Director of National Intelligence et al (IC), DoD, Government, Intelligence (government), Military, Officers Call, Power Behind-the-Scenes/Special Interests, Secrecy & Politics of Secrecy

The triumphalism in the US surrounding the liquidation of Qadaffi may be short lived. That is because most Americans do not appreciate how the legacy of anti-colonialism shapes the contemporary cultural DNA in North Africa or how influential that legacy has been in shaping the revolts of what is now called the Arab Spring. There is more going on in Tunisia, Egypt, and Libya than Jefferson's vision of revolution fertilizing the natural rights of man.

The coming elections in Tunisia, Egypt, and Libya may well result in victories or strong showings for the Islamic parties in each nation’s politics. The U.S., U.K., France, and Italy will not like such results, should they occur, and may will be tempted to intervene to contain or reverse them by influencing the elections either before the fact or overturning them after the fact. Further intervention would be certain to produce yet more unpleasant blowback.

As Peter Osborne argues below, before doing anything, we would do well to remember what happened to Algeria after the 1991-2 election and leave well enough alone. In what is widely regarded to have been a free and fair election, the Islamic Salvation Front (Front Islamique du Salut or FIS) won a stunning victory in Dec 1991 on the first ballot, just short of an outright majority. It was clear that the FIS would win a majority on the second ballot scheduled for Jan 1992, and perhaps even enough votes to amend the Algerian constitution. The Algerian army, aided (incited?) by France and the CIA, intervened to cancel the second ballot. The cancellation triggered a chain of events leading to a nightmarish civil war that ultimately killed over 100,000 people and left a state that is still ripe for revolution.

Chuck Spinney

Barcelona

Libya: The Arab Spring may yet turn to chilly winter

We may not like the consequences of elections in North Africa – but we must not repeat the mistakes of the past.

By Peter Oborne, Telegraph, 22 Oct 2011

The extra-judicial execution of Colonel Gaddafi has been greeted with international elation, and understandably so. There was very little to be said in favour of that gnarled torturer and war criminal. Nicolas Sarkozy and David Cameron, who masterminded the campaign against him, have some excuse to take the view that with the killing of Gaddafi, and today’s elections in Tunisia, the Arab Spring appears to be entering a hopeful stage.

Read full article.

2011/10/242011/10/24

DefDog: Department of State Screws Over Truth-Teller – Ties in to Robert Steele’s Legal Action Against DIA and DOHA

07 Other Atrocities, 09 Justice, 10 Security, Corruption, Counter-Oppression/Counter-Dictatorship Practices, Cultural Intelligence, Director of National Intelligence et al (IC), DoD, Government, Intelligence (government), Military, Open Government, Resilience, Secrecy & Politics of Secrecy

I am curious as to how this will play out in court if some of you come together to do a class action on State and Defense practices like this.

Diplomat Loses Top Secret Clearance for Linking to WikiLeaks

Kim Zetter

WIRED, 19 October 2011

A veteran U.S. State Department foreign service officer lost his security clearance and diplomatic passport this week while the department investigates him over linking to a WikiLeaks document on his blog and publishing a book critical of the government.

Peter Van Buren, who is 51 and has worked for the department for 23 years, had his Top Secret security clearance suspended indefinitely for what the department calls his unwillingness to comply with rules and regulations regarding “writing and speaking on matters of official concern.” This is according to a memo the State Department sent Van Buren.

The move is purely vindictive, according to Van Buren.

Read full story.

Amazon Page for the Truth-Teller's Book

Phi Beta Iota: The class action idea is interesting. Robert Steele is pursuing discovery to acquire all emails to and from Jim Clapper, Ron Burgess, and Tish Long about his varied efforts to secure employment within DoD, as well as discovery of all emails and documents surrounding his application for both the DISL jobs across DoD and the lesser DIA jobs [Steele kept book] that were manipulated to exclude Steele from consideration. There is no question but that DIA and DOHA are in violation while DNI (and before that USDI) were complicit, the only question is how much trouble it will be to document this, and how much can be demanded in damages above and beyond loss of $1 million in lost income–including a “by name” request for Steele to be Chief Instructor for Information Operations and Intelligence at COINSOC in Iraq a few years ago where a legal contract was received from Raytheon for $276K a year, and then withdrawn after DOHA told Raytheon no to a simple SECRET clearance without a Statement of Reasons or due process–the exchanges between Raytheon and DOHA will be the starting point for the lawsuit by Robert Steele against the US Government. It will take time, but the absence of integrity in this specific series will become a matter of legal record. If $10 million can be won–half for the legal team–that will be money earned by Steele for having persistent integrity. Integrity is now back in style–DNI, DOHA, and DIA are the last to know this–and of course the Department of State E Veritate Potens.

2011/10/22

Penguin: FBI Discovers Gangs Have Infiltrated US Military

07 Other Atrocities, 09 Justice, 10 Security, 10 Transnational Crime, 11 Society, Civil Society, Cultural Intelligence, DHS, DoD, IO Deeds of War, Law Enforcement, Military

This is very old news, but thought it interesting to highlight lag time between FBI and the original reports.

The FBI Announces Gangs Have Infiltrated Every Branch Of The Military

The FBI has released a new gang assessment announcing that there are 1.4 million gang members in the US, a 40 percent increase since 2009, and that many of these members are getting inside the military (via Stars and Stripes).

The report says the military has seen members from 53 gangs and 100 regions in the U.S. enlist in every branch of the armed forces. Members of every major street gang, some prison gangs, and outlaw motorcycle gangs (OMGs) have been reported on both U.S. and international military installations.

Read full story with link to report.

Phi Beta Iota: One can only marvel at the ability of the US Government (both political leaders and senior civil servants) to carry on without intelligence or integrity for decades. The USA remains the top proliferator of nuclear, biological, chemical, radiological, and small arms as well as cyber-weaponry. The USA remains locked into elective wars that have nothing to do with national interests and everything to do with special interests. And now we learn again (DHS published first, in 2007) that we are also training tens of thousands of gang members who are at the same time gaining access to weapons and munitions that we cannot account for…

2011/10/22

Chuck Spinney: The Mark to Market Fantasy Fraud

03 Economy, 07 Other Atrocities, 09 Justice, 10 Transnational Crime, 11 Society, Civil Society, Commerce, Commercial Intelligence, Corruption, Counter-Oppression/Counter-Dictatorship Practices, Cultural Intelligence, Government, Money, Banks & Concentrated Wealth, Office of Management and Budget

My friend Andrew Cockburn is on a roll. One week after his brilliant article on IEDs in Harpers, he has produced another hard-hitting tubesteak, this time in Counterpunch. Andrew's targets are the Banksters, whose looting continues to push the middle class into poverty and the lower income classes into a kind of debt servitude that is reminiscent of that imposed by company stores in the West Virginia coal towns in what we had hoped was a bygone era.

Andrew's essay is important, because the problem he is describing exists against the backdrop of the Great Recession, which now, three years after the banking system started to collapse, may be on the cusp of a full blown debt deflation, triggered by another, even more catastrophic banking collapse. My introductory comments are intended to help you understand that magnitude of that danger that Andrew is describing.

National Debt Burden 1929-2nd Qtr 2011 — Click on Image to Enlarge

The following charts (Figures 1 & 2), based on the most recent data released by the Federal Reserve,

portray ratio of debt to gross domestic product over time. Figure 1 shows how the cumulative debt changed in the entire system, with debt expressed as a percentage of the GDP produced by the economy. The debt ratio for the entire economy should not be thought of as an absolute measure of debt burden but as an indexof that burden, and is an indicator of the comparative pressure of that debt regardless of the overall size of the economy.[1] Thus, one can compare

Private Debt Burden 1929-2nd Qtr 2011 — Click on Image to Enlarge

changes in earlier years to those in later years. Figure 2 plots the sector burdens separately for the components in the private sector (note: since Federal Debt is arranged in bottom position in Figure 1 it is also the same shape that would be plotted in Figure 2; other categories, like state and local debt have been ignored because over time their ratio changes have not been significant enough to the alter the pattern in the figures). What do these figures tell us?

The Mark-to-Market Fantasy

Banks on the Brink

by ANDREW COCKBURN

Counterpunch, Weekend Edition October 21-23, 2011

“If the Occupiers start chanting ‘Mark to Market,’” an attorney highly conversant with the darker workings of the Wall Street-Washington complex told me, “we’ll know they’re serious.” Such a call would quickly presage the collapse of our “too big to fail” banks, for it would highlight the fact that a huge proportion of the assets of Bank of America, Wells Fargo, JP Morgan, and Citigroup consist of loans that will never be paid back and are therefore essentially worthless. The so called “recovery” of our leading financial institutions from the post-Lehman abyss has depended on a fraudulent valuation of these assets, but stripped of the fiction, the banks are insolvent.

Read full analysis.

Phi Beta Iota: The banks are on the brink–wildly fearful of a run on stocks and deposits–and the US Government knows they are on the brink–and is wildly fearful of nation-wide violence. Pissed off white people will make the Watts Riots looks like an effete tea party. There is good news. The close OccupyWallStreet gets to understanding the depth of the depravity of the government that enabled and enables Wall Street, the lack of intelligence and integrity within that government, the closer we get to being able to demand and secure the Electoral Reform Act of 2012, in our view the sole means by which a non-violent revolution might restore the integrity of the U.S. Government.

2011/10/222011/10/22

DefDog: Occupy Wall Street – Washington Still Doesn’t Get I

03 Economy, 07 Other Atrocities, Blog Wisdom, Corruption, Government, Money, Banks & Concentrated Wealth

The more they say they have changed, the more they remain the same…..

Occupy Wall Street: Washington Still Doesn't Get It

Matt Taibbi

Rolling Stone, 21 October 2011

I'll have more coming out about this in a few days, but there have been two disgusting developments in the realm of plutocratic intervention on behalf of Wall Street that everyone protesting should take note of.

The fact that both of the following things took place in the middle of the full fever of OWS, when everyone is supposedly trying to placate anti-banker sentiment and Obama and the DCCC are supposedly pledging support of the protesters, shows how completely bankrupt this system is and how necessary street-level protests have become. Popular uprising is probably the only move left to stop developments like the following:

Read full article.

Phi Beta Iota: This is why US Day of Rage and Phi Beta Iota both feel so strongly that Electoral Reform is the only immediately reasonable and achievable demand. Congress and the White House are under the delusion that they are going to be in power after 2012, and that #OWS is a light rain that will disappear over the winter. We do not agree. Politics has finally become very personal to the 99%. That is what's new. The lack of intelligence and integrity in the US Government is not new, but God willing, will be old news by 2012.

#OWS Proposed Electoral Reform Act of 2012 Demand

2011/10/202011/10/20

Naomi Wolf: #OWS NYPD & DHS OUT OF CONTROL

07 Other Atrocities, 09 Justice, 10 Security, Civil Society, Corruption, Counter-Oppression/Counter-Dictatorship Practices, Cultural Intelligence, DHS, Ethics, Law Enforcement, Officers Call, Peace Intelligence

Naomi Wolf: how I was arrested at Occupy Wall Street

Arresting a middle-aged writer in an evening gown for peaceable conduct is a far cry from when America was a free republic

Naomi Wolf

Guardian, Wednesday 19 October 2011

Last night I was arrested in my home town, outside an event to which I had been invited, for standing lawfully on the sidewalk in an evening gown.

Read full article (includes short video).

Naomi-Wolf-is-arrested-du-007 — Click on Image to Enlarge

Phi Beta Iota: Naomi Wolf is the author of The End of America: Letter of Warning to a Young Patriot and also Give Me Liberty: A Handbook for American Revolutionaries. Safety copy of Guardian article with additional comments from others below the line. The NYPD and DHS are OUT OF CONTROL and far, far beyond the bounds of the Constitution. The time has come to begin demanding impeachments of public officials and criminal prosecution of specific police officers so that they might learn what they evidently were not taught: the responsibility to refuse illegal orders. What our military officers abroad and our police officers at home are doing is illegal, unconstitutional, and reprehensible in every possible morally disengaged way.

Updates from Naomi Wolf – Permit Seen, NYPD Officers Were Ignorant or Lying

Continue reading “Naomi Wolf: #OWS NYPD & DHS OUT OF CONTROL”

2011/10/202011/10/20

David Isenberg: Rise and Fall of Covert Operations

07 Other Atrocities, 10 Security, 11 Society, Corruption, DoD, IO Deeds of War, Military

The Rise And Rise Of Western Covert Ops

By Peter Apps, Political Risk Correspondent

Reuters.com, October 18, 2011

WASHINGTON — Four months ago, Admiral William McRaven commanded the operation that killed Osama bin Laden. Now, as the new head of U.S. special forces, he argues that his shadowy, secretive warriors are increasingly central to how America and its allies fight.

When the suntanned, towering SEAL testified to the Congressional House Armed Services Committee in September, just a few weeks after he took over his new role, he used posters detailing the growth of his forces. In the decade since September 11 2001, U.S. Special Operations Command personnel numbers have doubled, its budget tripled and deployments quadrupled.

Read full story.

Phi Beta Iota: In a debt-based secrecy-enabled government, there is no scrutiny of such programs, neither in relation to return on investment or in relation to moral engagement. The US Government lacks intelligence and integrity and is OUT OF CONTROL.