07 Other Atrocities – Page 438 – Public Intelligence Blog

2011/09/07

DefDog: Nation’s Top Cops Slam US Intelligence

03 Economy, 07 Other Atrocities, 09 Justice, 09 Terrorism, 10 Security, 11 Society, Commerce, Commercial Intelligence, Corruption, Cultural Intelligence, DHS, Director of National Intelligence et al (IC), Government, IO Deeds of War, Law Enforcement

Failure, across the board…..implications of this for domestic security abound…..where has all the money gone?

Report: Nation's Top Cops Say U.S. Counterterror Effort Is Lacking

Ten years after 9/11, top cops in the nation's biggest cities feel there
are still significant gaps in the intelligence and analysis they receive
about terrorism, even as the homegrown terror threat looms larger.

A survey of intelligence commanders from America's 56 biggest cities conducted by the Homeland Security Policy Institute found the police chiefs believe the nation's intelligence enterprise is less robust than it could be, and that 62 percent of the chiefs felt this lack left them “unable to develop a complete understanding of their local threat.”

Read full article.

Read full report.

Phi Beta Iota: The “top cops” are great people, they just do not understand that the terror threat is fradulent and that the homeland security industrial complex is working precisely as intended, wasting hundreds of billions on fraudulent dysfunctional white and white-collar employment while channeling hundreds of billions in unearned profits to the homeland security industrial complex.

No More Secrets: Open Source Information and the Reshaping of U.S. Intelligence

2011/09/072011/09/07

Penguin: CIA’s Metamorphis Into the Drone Machine

03 Economy, 07 Other Atrocities, 10 Security, 11 Society, Corruption, Director of National Intelligence et al (IC), Government, IO Deeds of War

If you build it, they will come….

CIA's Push for Drone War Driven by Internal Needs

Gareth Porter

The World News, 6 September 2011

EXTRACT:

The shift in the CIA mission's has been reflected in the spectacular growth of its Counter-terrorism Center (CTC) from 300 employees in September 2001 to about 2,000 people today – 10 percent of the agency's entire workforce, according to the Post report.

The agency's analytical branch, which had been previously devoted entirely to providing intelligence assessments for policymakers, has been profoundly affected.

More than one-third of the personnel in the agency's analytical branch are now engaged wholly or primarily in providing support to CIA operations, according to senior agency officials cited by the Post. And nearly two-thirds of those are analysing data used by the CTC drone war staff to make decisions on targeting.

Read full article.

2011/09/062011/09/06

Winslow Wheeler: True Cost of Post-9/11 Wars $5T+

03 Economy, 04 Inter-State Conflict, 05 Civil War, 07 Other Atrocities, 09 Justice, 10 Security, 11 Society, Civil Society, Corruption, DoD, Government, IO Deeds of War, Military, Peace Intelligence

WinslowWheeler Cropped — Winslow Wheeler

What Has Been the Cost of the Post-9/11 Wars?

Email from Winslow Wheeler

This week, as the media runs its displays on America ten years after the 9/11 attacks, there will be references to the dollar costs. A figure some will use is the one trillion dollars President Obama cited as for the war in Iraq. That figure is a gross underestimate.

The war in Iraq and its costs are inseparable from the wars in Afghanistan, Yemen, Pakistan, the Philippines, Somalia and elsewhere. Indeed, when the Defense Department seeks appropriations for them, it does not distinguish the costs by location; nor does Congress in appropriations bills.

Moreover, the DOD costs are hardly the whole story: add costs in the State Department budget for aid to the governments (such as they are) of Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Yemen and elsewhere.

Add also the costs to care for the US veterans of these wars. That would include the care already extended and the care now obligated for the duration of these men's and women's lives.

Add to that the expanded costs of domestic security against terrorism.

Add also the interest we annually pay for the deficit spending that has financed the wars.

Continue reading “Winslow Wheeler: True Cost of Post-9/11 Wars $5T+”

2011/09/052011/09/05

Joseph Stiglitz: The True Cost of 9/11 — Includes 18 Veteran Suicides a Day

04 Inter-State Conflict, 05 Civil War, 07 Other Atrocities, 09 Justice, 09 Terrorism, 10 Security, 11 Society, Corruption, Cultural Intelligence, DoD, Government, IO Deeds of War, Military, Officers Call

The True Cost of 9/11

Trillions and trillions wasted on wars, a fiscal catastrophe, a weaker America.

By Joseph E. Stiglitz

Slate, Thursday, Sept. 1, 2011

The Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks by al-Qaida were meant to harm the United States, and they did, but in ways that Osama Bin Laden probably never imagined. President George W. Bush's response to the attacks compromised America's basic principles, undermined its economy, and weakened its security.

The attack on Afghanistan that followed the 9/11 attacks was understandable, but the subsequent invasion of Iraq was entirely unconnected to al-Qaida—as much as Bush tried to establish a link. That war of choice quickly became very expensive—orders of magnitude beyond the $60 billion claimed at the beginning—as colossal incompetence met dishonest misrepresentation.

Indeed, when Linda Bilmes and I calculated America's war costs three years ago, the conservative tally was $3 trillion to $5 trillion. Since then, the costs have mounted further. With almost 50 percent of returning troops eligible to receive some level of disability payment, and more than 600,000 treated so far in veterans' medical facilities, we now estimate that future disability payments and health care costs will total $600 billion to $900 billion. The social costs, reflected in veteran suicides (which have topped 18 per day in recent years) and family breakups, are incalculable.

Read full article…

How focusing too much on the war on terror undermined our economy and global power.

By Anne Applebaum Slate, 4 September 2011

2011/09/052011/09/05

Chuck Spinney: Big Oil Screwing US for Peak Profits

03 Economy, 03 Environmental Degradation, 05 Energy, 07 Other Atrocities, 11 Society, Advanced Cyber/IO, Blog Wisdom, Civil Society, Collective Intelligence, Commerce, Commercial Intelligence, Corporations, Cultural Intelligence, Earth Intelligence, Government, Misinformation & Propaganda, Politics of Science & Science of Politics, Power Behind-the-Scenes/Special Interests, Waste (materials, food, etc)

It looks increasingly likely that President Obama is going to cave into the oil interests promoting the pipeline to move oil mine in tar sands of Canada to the Port Arthur Free Trade Zone in Texas.

One of the prime selling points of this scheme, which has environmentalists all in uproar will no doubt be that the pipeline is needed for energy security. So what is going on? My good friend Pierre Sprey's answer may surprise you. He has graciously given me permission to distribute it.

Peak Oil or Peak Profits?

email from Pierre Sprey, 5 September 2005

A new Oil Change International report has injected a breath of fresh air into the endless stream of media BS about peak oil, declining US oil production, disastrous dependence on foreign oil, need for new offshore drilling, blah, blah , blah, blah…. The report's charts show that our domestic oil production has been rising markedly since 2008. The excess domestic oil and the new Keystone pipeline oil are unneeded for the domestic market and will go largely to exports to fatten Big Oil's bottom line.

The most interesting conclusions are:

“Gasoline demand is declining due to increasing vehicle efficiency and slow economic growth;
Meanwhile the surge in new shale oil production in North Dakota and Texas has led to the first rise in U.S. oil production since 1970 and is forecast to continue for some time;
As a result of stagnant demand and the rise in both domestic and Canadian oil production, there is a glut of oil in the U.S. market.

Refiners have therefore identified export markets as their primary hope for growth and maximum profits.

Continue reading “Chuck Spinney: Big Oil Screwing US for Peak Profits”

2011/09/05

Cynthia McKinney: Hands Off Libya — 21 Sep Protests

04 Inter-State Conflict, 05 Civil War, 07 Other Atrocities, 08 Wild Cards, 10 Security, 11 Society, Civil Society, Corruption, Cultural Intelligence, Government, IO Deeds of War, Media, Military, Peace Intelligence

Phi Beta Iota: The following is being circulated world-wide (less US “mainstream” media), and represents both an African view, and the view of those associated with Cynthia McKinney and her related concerns of 21st Century imperialism and genocide against black Africans at the hands of the Libyan forces seeking to topple Qathafi.

Hands off Libya Protests on September 21

Mathaba, 2011/09/05

Statement by masses in Ghana and also advice on how to organize a demonstration in your own community.

The “US/NATO Hands Off Libya! Hands Off Africa!” coalition consists of revolutionary and progressive African organizations in Ghana who oppose the US/NATO illegal invasion of Libya/Africa and support Muammar Qathafi and the Libyan Jamahiriya to win the war against US/NATO imperialist forces and NTC/Al Qaeda reactionaries. The coalition is organizing a march from Kwame Nkrumah Circle to the US Embassy to demonstrate against the illegal US/NATO invasion and for victory to Qathafi and the Libyan Jamahiriya on 21st September 2011.

We are calling on all Africans in Africa and the diaspora to demonstrate at US embassies on the same day.

Original online.

Safety copy below the line.

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2011/09/052011/09/05

Chuck Spinney: Can USA Move Beyond 9/11 Pathology?

01 Poverty, 03 Economy, 04 Inter-State Conflict, 05 Civil War, 06 Genocide, 07 Other Atrocities, 08 Proliferation, 09 Terrorism, 10 Security, 10 Transnational Crime, Civil Society, Corruption, Cultural Intelligence, DoD, Government, IO Deeds of War, Media, Military, Money, Banks & Concentrated Wealth, Officers Call, Policy, Politics of Science & Science of Politics, Power Behind-the-Scenes/Special Interests, Strategy, Waste (materials, food, etc)

CS Note: Lightly reformatted by text unchanged and nothing added

Can the United States move beyond the narcissism of 9/11?

The unity brought about by the tragedy was intense but fleeting. The war on terror has been disastrous abroad and divisive at home

Gary Younge, guardian.co.uk, Sunday 4 September 2011 18.00

In the immediate aftermath of the September 11 attacks the then national security adviser, Condoleezza Rice, called in her senior staff and asked them to think seriously about “how [to] capitalise on these opportunities”.

The primary opportunity came from a public united in anger, grief and fear which the Bush administration sought to leverage to maximum political effect. “I think September 11 was one of those great earthquakes that clarify and sharpen,” Rice told the New Yorker six months afterwards. “Events are in much sharper relief.”

Ten years later the US response to the terror attacks have clarified three things:

the limits to what its enormous military power can achieve,
its relative geopolitical decline and
the intensity of its polarised political culture.

It proved itself

incapable of winning the wars it chose to fight and
incapable of paying for them and
incapable of coming to any consensus as to why.

The combination of domestic repression at home and military aggression abroad kept no one safe, and endangered the lives of many. The execution of Osama bin Laden provoked such joy in part because almost every other American response to 9/11 is regarded as a partial or total failure.

Read original online–safety copy below the line.

Continue reading “Chuck Spinney: Can USA Move Beyond 9/11 Pathology?”