04 Inter-State Conflict – Page 109 – Public Intelligence Blog

2011/10/07

Chuck Spinney: In new window Print all The Liquidation of al-Awlaqi – Droning Mindlessly Into an American Jihad

04 Inter-State Conflict, 05 Civil War, 07 Other Atrocities, 08 Wild Cards, 09 Terrorism, 10 Security, Corruption, Cultural Intelligence, Director of National Intelligence et al (IC), DoD, Government, IO Deeds of War, Law Enforcement, Military

Using the extra-judicial liquidation of Anwar al-Awlaqi as a point of departure, Patrick Seale provides very useful and important survey of the strategic and grand strategic implications of the expanding U.S. conflict in what now might be called the Yemen Theater of Operations (YTO) in what is rapidly mutating into a U.S. Jihad against the Islamic world. The United States is now in involved militarily in wars encompassing at least six theaters of operations in the Islamic world, including Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Yemen, Libya, and Somalia, with possible expansions into the Sahel and Nigeria, not to mention Iran and who knows where else.

Chuck Spinney
Badalona, Catalunya (part of Spain according to some)

Anwar al-Awlaqi, Yemen, and Obama’s War

by Patrick Seale

Agence Global, 4 Oct 2011

On Friday, 30 September, Yemen announced that a Hellfire missile fired from a CIA-operated drone had killed Shaykh Anwar al-Awlaqi, in the north of the country. His grief-stricken father, once a minister of agriculture in a Yemeni government, went to the scene to collect and bury the pieces of what remained of Anwar’s body. It was the seventh U.S. strike in Yemen this year.

Anwar al-Awlaqi was a virulent critic of American foreign policy in the Arab world, and a passionate advocate of al-Qaida’s form of Islamic jihad. He was also a U.S. citizen, born in New Mexico, with an engineering degree from Colorado State University. His internet sermons, delivered in fluent English, had a devoted following, especially among young Muslims in the West.

His killing inevitably aroused a storm of controversy in the United States about its legality. In an article in The National Interest, Paul R. Pillar, a former senior CIA officer now a university professor, described it as “essentially a long-range execution without judge, jury or publicly presented evidence.” This is a subject which must be left to the Americans to debate.

What are its probable consequences? The most obvious is that it is likely further to inflame some Muslims against the United States, drawing fresh recruits into the jihadist struggle. “Why kill him in this brutal, ugly way?” a member of his Awalik tribe was quoted as saying. “Killing him will not solve the Americans’ problem with al-Qaida. It will just increase its strength and sympathy in this region.”

A key question, therefore, is whether al-Qaida — including its Yemen-based offshoot, “Al-Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula” — is an organisation or a cause.

Read full article.

2011/10/052011/10/22

Robert Steele: OccupyWallStreet Message and Method

04 Inter-State Conflict, 07 Other Atrocities, 10 Transnational Crime, 11 Society, Blog Wisdom, Civil Society, Counter-Oppression/Counter-Dictatorship Practices, Cultural Intelligence, Ethics, Hacking, IO Deeds of Peace

steele smiling final — Robert David STEELE Vivas

Now that the labor unions have joined the General Assembly (an amorphous ever changing coalition of the concerned across the Republic), the way is open to begin focusing on what is to be done in the next six months.

My view of the Core Message:

CORRUPTION is the common enemy, both in government and in the private sector.

ELECTORAL REFORM is the singular demand.

SUNSHINE CABINET is the method.

INTEGRITY is the core value.

COMMONWEALTH RESTORED is the outcome.

My view of the Core Method:

Merit. Be right. Non-violence and moral conduct at all times is vital UNLESS attacked illegally, at that point you “rush and crush.” Offer Truth & Reconciliation, not revenge and certainly not confiscation of assets outside the rule of law. The point here is to achieve a “cease and desist” on government corruption and financial terrorism.

Message. Electoral Reform

Money. Big Bat for the Republic. 25 million times $10 is $250 million. 50 million times $20 is 1 billion. 100 million times $40 is 4 billion. Wall Street cannot match a public combination of money and mass.

Means. Use mass power on individual Senators and Representatives. Any Senator, any Representative, and any Governor that fails to introduce Electoral Reform Act for national and state passage should be toast–run out of office. Create coalition cabinets and balanced budgets at every level from zip code and municipality to county, state, bio-region, and national.

2011/10/032011/10/03

Chuck Spinney: Meltdown in the Maghreb?

04 Inter-State Conflict, 05 Civil War, 07 Other Atrocities, 08 Wild Cards, 09 Justice, 10 Security, 11 Society, Civil Society, Corruption, Cultural Intelligence, Government, IO Deeds of War, IO Impotency

Want a headache … read this!

Chuck Spinney
Blanes, Spain

MEC Analytical Group
29 September 2011
The Sahara

According to a spokesman of the Libyan National Transitional Council Qadhafi is believed to be holed up near the western town of Ghadamis near the Algerian border under the protection of Tuareg tribesmen. Qadhafi supported Tuareg rebellions against the governments of Mali and Niger in the 1970s and allowed them to settle in Libya.

The Algerian Foreign Minister announced last week that his country was ready to work closely with the new Libyan authorities, adding that Algeria would eventually recognise the National Transitional Council.

We circulate below an article published by Al Jazeera which attempts to consider the many and confusing factors which influence developments in the Sahara including the position of Niger, Chad and Mali as well as Algeria and Libya, the Tuareg and other Saharan people, al-Qa’ida in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM), American pursuit of the “global war on terror” GWOT, and most recently the possibility that Qadhafi or his supporters will continue disruptive activity after their defeat in Libya itself. The author is a professor of social anthropology at the London School of Oriental and African Studies who seems to be the only analyst of the area writing in English.

Libya and the Sahel's nightmare scenario

Libya's uprising is causing turmoil in amid its neighbours and speculation of a Tuareg rebellion has emerged.

Jeremy Keenan

Aljazeera, 28 Sep 2011

EXTRACT:

Prior to the start of Libya's revolution in February, the Sahelian regions of Niger and Mali had already suffered eight years of increasing political instability and insecurity. The reasons for this are complex:

First, having partially recovered from the Tuareg rebellions of the 1990s, the rulers of both Niger and Mali became willing, pliant and corrupt partners in the global war on terror (GWOT). This transformation occured following the complicity between the US and Algeria's mukhabarat [security services] and the Departement du Renseignement et de la Securite [DRS – Department of Intelligence and Security] in fabricating terrorism in the region in order to justify the launch of the 2003 second front in the GWOT in the Sahel/Sahara. That alone brought an almost instant decimation of the predominantly Tuareg tourist industry and an annual loss of an estimated $50m.

Another factor contributing to instability in the region occured in 2005, following the political provocation of the Tuareg by the Niger government. This led to a short-lived rebellion, while in May 2006 the US and Algeria's DRS orchestrated a Tuareg rebellion in northeastern Mali. This was followed, four to five months later, by two contrived “terrorist” engagements designed to facilitate the name change of Algeria's GSPC into al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM) and its “insertion” into the Sahel.

Read full article.

Continue reading “Chuck Spinney: Meltdown in the Maghreb?”

2011/09/28

Chuck Spinney: Fiascos of American Foreign Policy

02 Diplomacy, 03 Economy, 04 Inter-State Conflict, 07 Other Atrocities, 08 Wild Cards, 09 Terrorism, 10 Security, 11 Society, Corruption, DoD, Government, IO Deeds of War, Military, Peace Intelligence

This is really good analysis.

Fiascos of American Foreign Policy

by Patrick Seale

Agence Global, 27 Sep 2011

U.S. President Barack Obama is piling up foreign policy disasters. In at least three areas, crucial for world peace and American interests — Arab-Israel, Afghanistan-Pakistan and Yemen-Somalia — he is pursuing a course which can only be described as foolhardy. The anger and hate towards the United States which he is generating could take a generation to dispel.

. . . . . . .

Is it not time to enquire whether U.S. policy has not created more terrorists than the CIA has managed to kill? Would it not be better if the United States were simply to declare victory in Afghanistan — and indeed in all the other places where its Special Forces operate — bring its troops home as soon as possible and turn its attention to tending the wounds in its own broken society?

Patrick Seale is a leading British writer on the Middle East. His latest book is The Struggle for Arab Independence: Riad el-Solh and the Makers of the Modern Middle East (Cambridge University Press).

Read full story.

Phi Beta Iota: The assumption that US foreign policy is somehow focused on peace or prosperity is evidently not correct. The people who make policy and give orders are not stupid–they are achieving the outcomes they desire. What is different is that a much greater percentage of the public than ever before can now use public intelligence to determine that these policies are not in the public interest, and therefore, are much more likely to be associated with treason–high crimes and misdemeanors that yield personal profit and public pain.

2011/09/282011/09/28

G.I. Wilson: Killer Drones, Moral Disengagement, + War Crimes RECAP

04 Inter-State Conflict, 05 Civil War, 06 Genocide, 07 Other Atrocities, 09 Justice, 10 Security, 11 Society, Blog Wisdom, Cultural Intelligence, DHS, Director of National Intelligence et al (IC), DoD, Government, IO Deeds of War, Law Enforcement, Military, Officers Call

The Psychology of Killer Drones – action against our foes; reaction affecting us

G. I. Wilson

Fabius Maximus, 28 September 2011

Summary: We now have enough experience with drone warfare to study its effects. Just as in physics, our actions affect ourselves as well as our targets. Social science research shows that drones are a gateway to moral disengagement dehumanization, and deindividuation. The great distances drones operate over, manipulated by faceless-nameless-lawyeristic-voyeurs, creates an emotional, mental, and physical divide between “us” ( i.e. our government) and the enemies we kill. Drones allow us to dissociate our actions from our values, a useful high-cost and high-tech justification. At the end are links to gain more information about this new form of warfare.

For every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction.
— Newtons Third Law of Motion, Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy (1687)

Contents

Moral Disengagement
Dehumanization
Deindividuation
For more information

Read full article with many supporting links and references.

Winslow Wheeler: His article gives a chilling rebuke to those who glibly see them as “the future of warfare” and essential for counter-terror operations without acknowledging the consequences.

Robert Steele: The US Government has lost both its intelligence and its integrity. This has been a consistent theme of this web site, and while I have distanced myself from the day to day operations of Phi Beta Iota–they now have a life of their own–G. I. Wilson is one of the original Marines in this era able to demonstrate both intelligence and integrity, and one of the original gurus on asymmetric warfare. That he got to be a Colonel is a credit to the Marine Corps. “Authority” in the U.S. Government is now irrational, illegitimate, and out of control. Even from a practical stand-point, the bandwidth for remote killer drones costs more than human pilots would, and human pilots would have the added advantage of situational awareness, something that simply cannot be achieved from a one-dimensional cockpit in the middle of the USA. From killer drones to JSOC assassinations to the totally illegal war on Libya, the US Government is now a monstrous collage of atrocities being perpetuated against its own public (22% unemployment, 18 veterans a day committing suicide, just under 16% under the poverty line) as well as foreign publics from Palestine and Libya to Central Asia to the Southern Hemisphere. What is being done “in our name” is unaffordable, reprehensible, and long over due for presentation to the International Tribunal with a long list of “by name” perpetrators that should run from Congress and the White House down to the individual pilots and squadron commanders that have betrayed their Oaths of office. What we are doing every day is neither patriotic nor moral.

2011/09/28

Cynthia McKinney: Fidel Castro Makes Sense, Slams Barack Obama for “Gibberish” and Moral Hazard

04 Inter-State Conflict, 05 Civil War, 06 Genocide, 07 Other Atrocities, 07 Venezuela, 08 Wild Cards, 09 Justice, 10 Security, 11 Society, Corruption, Counter-Oppression/Counter-Dictatorship Practices, Cultural Intelligence, Director of National Intelligence et al (IC), DoD, Government, IO Deeds of War, Military, Officers Call

Fidel Castro calls Obama UN address ‘gibberish'

Tuesday, 27 September 2011 14:28

“Who understands the gibberish of the president of the United States before the General Assembly?” Castro asked.

AFP – September 26, 2011
HAVANA – Cuba's Fidel Castro blasted Barack Obama's speech to the United Nations as “gibberish” on Monday, saying the US president used a rambling address to justify the “unjustifiable.”

In his first published column since July, the 85-year-old revolutionary icon slammed US and NATO intervention in Libya as “monstrous crimes” and said Obama — whom he called the “yankee president” — used a bully pulpit at the UN General Assembly last week to try and sway global opinion.

Fidel, who handed the presidency to his younger brother Raul Castro in 2006 due to a health crisis, has laid low in recent months, and his column published in state media was his first since July 3.

In Monday's piece he came out swinging, saying Obama distorted the situations in Syria, Iran, Iraq, Yemen, Egypt, Afghanistan, North Korea, Libya and the Palestinian conflict, and that the US leader used “a long rant to explain and justify the inexplicable and unjustifiable.”

“Who understands the gibberish of the president of the United States before the General Assembly?” Castro asked.

Castro also took issue with the “fascist methods by the United States and its allies to confuse and manipulate global opinion,” and said he was heartened by the “resistance” of his key allies Hugo Chavez and Evo Moralez, presidents of Venezuela and Bolivia, respectively, who criticized US and UN policy in their speeches.

“Has any nation been excluded from the bloody threats of this illustrious defender of international peace and security?” Castro said of Obama, whose UN quotes he cited extensively in his column.

“Who gave the United States such privileges?” Castro said.

He said countries must consider taking a stand at the General Assembly against the “NATO genocide in Libya,” an action Castro described as one of many “flagrant violations of principles.”

“Does anyone want it to be recorded that under their direction, the government of their nation supported the monstrous crimes by the United States and its NATO allies?” he said.

Washington and Havana are Cold War adversaries who have brought their mutual dislike and distrust into the 21st century, and Castro routinely makes political attacks on his ideological foe.

2011/09/26

Chuck Spinney: Obama’s Shame — & Threat to USA

02 Diplomacy, 03 Economy, 04 Inter-State Conflict, 07 Other Atrocities, 08 Wild Cards, 09 Terrorism, 10 Security, 11 Society, Corruption, Cultural Intelligence, Government, IO Deeds of War

President Obama's craven performance at the UN has both humiliated the United States and made a mockery of what little remains of America's pretensions to the principles of freedom, democracy, fair play, and simple human decency. Like Colin Powell, he made the wrong turn at the “to be” or “to do” fork in the road; he put career and short-term ambition ahead of common sense and personal honor; and ironically, he made the same faustian bargain publicly on the same world stage for all to see. For a men of such great promise to stumble so miserably is not only a personal tragedy of Shakespearian proportions: their pusillanimity under pressure opens the door to unpredictable grand strategic* ramifications that menace the wellbeing of hundreds of millions of people at home and abroad.

Below is one thoughtful observer's exploration of some of these ramifications; there will be other assessments … and very few of them will be pretty.

At least LBJ, who tried to do some things, recognized when his time was over, and left gracefully. But in the Hall of Mirrors that is Versailles on the Potomac at the dawn of the 21st Century, that won't happen again, and Mr. Obama's ultimate disgrace will be to prove that the easy being was far more important than the hard doing when engineering the moral and material decline of a nation.

________
* The criteria underpinning a sensible grand strategy are explained here.

Chuck Spinney
Port Vendres, France

The Third Intifada Targets Israel-America

by Rami G. Khouri

Agence Global, 26 Sep 2011

[CS Note: I reformatted this insightful essay to highlight important points, but did not change any text or the order of presentation]

BOSTON — It remains to be seen what actually changes on the ground in the months ahead following the Palestinian initiative to ask the United Nations to recognize a Palestinian state in the 1967 Israeli-occupied territories as a UN member or observer state. The move could be a substantive gain for the Palestinian people, a symbolic victory only, or a measurable setback if the United States and Israel translate their vindictive rhetoric into hard policies. While we wait for the impact of the UN move to become clearer, we should acknowledge nevertheless that this has been a historic week in several ways.

I.The most important new development that future historians will record is that this last week in September represented the moment when the Arab-Israeli conflict structurally transformed into the Arab-Israeli/American conflict, because of the profound and explicit manner in which the U.S. government has come down on the side of Israel. The United States historically has tried, without much success but with visible endeavor nevertheless, to express its support for Israel’s survival and security while also trying to mediate a resolution of the conflict that sees the birth of a Palestinian state in much of the 1967 occupied lands. That balancing act, unconvincing as it was, is formally dead for now — repeatedly shot in the heart by a firing squad of American politicians who have unleashed volleys of shotguns at the weak and doomed phenomenon that was once called “American mediation”.