04 Inter-State Conflict – Page 97 – Public Intelligence Blog

2012/06/062012/06/06

Penguin: USS Liberty Messages Declassified by NSA

04 Inter-State Conflict, 07 Other Atrocities, 08 Wild Cards, Cultural Intelligence, Director of National Intelligence et al (IC), DoD, Government, IO Deeds of War, Military, Officers Call

U.S.S. Liberty Messages

Source

2012/06/012020/02/24

DefDog: Keith Alexander, Moth to the Flame of Capital Corruption

04 Inter-State Conflict, 07 Other Atrocities, Corruption, Government, IO Deeds of War, IO Impotency, Military

The problem is they don't have much to offer, other than going along. Corporate profits need to be sustained and attending (not fixing) the Cyber world appears to be the new way of doing it. And as a side note, it is the Congressional-cyber-industrial complex……since Congree allocates the funding and reaps the lobbyist's support…

Cyberthreats turn into megabucks for defense companies

By: Tony Romm and Jennifer Martinez

Politico, May 30, 2012

As Congress boosts spending on cybersecurity and mulls over new data safety requirements on private industry, some companies stand to get rich.

Lockheed Martin, Boeing, Northrop Grumman and other defense and tech companies have been lobbying Capitol Hill about the growing cyberthreats to national security and corporate America, but they also make millions of dollars each year selling a variety of cybersecurity programs, tools and solutions to government and business.

Some lawmakers say the legislative push has spawned a “cyber-industrial complex.”

“I believe these bills will encourage the development of an industry that profits from fear and whose currency is Americans’ private data,” said Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.), speaking on the Senate floor last week in opposition to pending cybersecurity legislation. “These bills create a cyber-industrial complex that has an interest in preserving the problem to which it is the solution.”

The online threats of the digital age — stolen state secrets, hacked personal computers and more — may pose serious, real and novel challenges to the federal government and private sector alike.

But the reaction to those threats has been far more old school: Companies in several different industries are aggressively playing the legislative lobbying game as part of their larger market strategy.

And it’s paying off in millions of dollars of federal contracts alone.

Read full article.

The Bilderbergers now post the participant list on their “official” website. In the past, moles inside the organization would release the secretive list to journalists.

Bilderberg Meetings
Chantilly, Virginia, USA, 31 May-3 June 2012

Final List of Participants Including General Keith Alexander, D/NSA and D/Cyber-Command

Continue reading “DefDog: Keith Alexander, Moth to the Flame of Capital Corruption”

2012/05/302012/05/30

Chuck Spinney: Global Moral Downside of Privatizing US Military Support

03 Economy, 04 Inter-State Conflict, 07 Other Atrocities, 11 Society, Commerce, Corruption, Government, Military

In the late 1980s, under the leadership of Secretary of Defense Dick Cheney, the Pentagon began to privatise many of the military's support services that had traditionally be done soldiers, sailors, and airmen — laundries, dining halls, security guards, cleaning latrines, some supply functions, etc. It was argued at the time that this would save money and free up troops for combat duties, thus increasing the tooth-to-tail ratio of our military forces. According to this logic, fact that we were fielding an army that could not feed itself or wash its own laundry was deemed to be a cost-effective contributor to combat power. Of course, the only real result was to transfer another large part of the defense budget to the defense contractors and open up vast new opportunities for price gouging.

It is an undeniable fact that, despite a massive move to privatization of support functions by the Pentagon, the tooth-to-tail ratio continued to get worse during the 1990s and in the subsequent decade, the daily cost per unit of deployed combat power, be it troops marching in the mud, flying hours, ship steaming hours, or tank miles driven, etc continued to increase at a rate much faster than the overall defense budget increased.<

As a result, two relatively low-tempo, small wars (compared to Korea or Vietnam) — i.e., Iraq and Afghanistan — have now cost more than any war America has fought, save WWII (in inflation adjusted dollars). Privatization — the neoliberal panacea for all things according to the adherents of the Chicago School of economics — may have created bloated profits for the MICC, fomented the rise of private armies, like Blackwater, and increased the corruption that naturally takes place among war profiteers, but the result has been a disaster for our nation.<

The below article in Le Monde Diplomatique is a good, albeit disgusting, example of how the privatization of public enterprise works in the real world of America's permanent war economy.

Continue reading “Chuck Spinney: Global Moral Downside of Privatizing US Military Support”

2012/05/262012/05/26

David Swanson: Lies and Consequences Across 15 Wars

04 Inter-State Conflict, 07 Other Atrocities, 10 Security, 11 Society, Corruption, DoD, Government, IO Deeds of War, Media, Military

Lies and Consequences in Our Past 15 Wars

By David Swanson

“Kings had always been involving and impoverishing their peoples in wars, pretending generally, if not always, that the good of the people was their object. This, our Convention understood to be the most oppressive of all Kingly oppressions; and they resolved to so frame the Constitution that no one man should hold the power of bringing this oppression upon us.”–Abraham Lincoln

Continue reading “David Swanson: Lies and Consequences Across 15 Wars”

2012/05/21

Chuck Spinney: The Afghanistan Exit – Looting the Useful Idiots to the Bitter End

04 Inter-State Conflict, 08 Wild Cards, 10 Security, Cultural Intelligence, Government, Idiocy, Military

When Alexander the Great decided to leave Afghanistan, his plan was to exit via the Khyber Pass and march though what is now Pakistan and thence into India. But the Khyber was blocked by a warring Pashtun tribe. Legend has it that Alex's exit strategy was to bribe another Pashtun tribe to open the door by attacking and driving off the first tribe. The gambit worked and he escaped with his forces largely intact, Alexander looked shrewd in the history books. But is that the whole story?

I have often wondered if old Alex was snookered by two tribes in cahoots in a scheme to extort money and divide the proceeds from an invader desperate to leave. Of course we will never know if this actually happened, but as the following report in yesterday's Sunday Times suggests, my speculation has a quintessential Pashtun flavor and is therefore not outside the realm of probability.

Chuck Spinney
Port Cogolin, France

Afghan Troops And Tailban In Pact To Loot NATO Convoys

Secret alliances threaten to undermine the West's strategy of handing more responsibility for security to local forces

By Miles Amoore and Christina Lamb, London Sunday Times, May 20, 2012

THE two men should be sworn enemies. One is a Taliban commander waging what he says is a holy war against foreign soldiers in Afghanistan. The other is an Afghan army officer trained and paid by Nato to fight the Taliban.

Yet rather than do battle, the two men have forged a secret alliance. In the area of Ghazni province where both are based, just an hour's drive south of Kabul, they collaborate to loot Nato supply convoys, dividing up the proceeds. They even share intelligence about military operations.

Continue reading “Chuck Spinney: The Afghanistan Exit – Looting the Useful Idiots to the Bitter End”

2012/05/182012/05/18

Winslow Wheeler: The F-22, Toxic Stealth, Secrets Screw Sick…

04 Inter-State Conflict, 07 Other Atrocities, Corruption, DoD, Government, Military

WinslowWheeler Cropped — Winslow Wheeler

Dina Rasor and Pierre Sprey have collaborated on an important and informative piece on the F-22. It expands the publically available thinking about the nature of the toxicity problem facing F-22 pilots, and–just as importantly–it probes the nature of one of the prime suspects for the problem: the F-22's “stealth” coating. Note at the end of the piece: for all the astronomic cost, low sortie rates, and aerodynamic mis-shaping of aircraft those stealth coatings have caused, they bring little meaningful tactical advantage against an enemy who knows how to deal with them. Case in point: not mentioned in the brief but important discussion of radars that see “stealth” aircraft is the antiquated Soviet era radar and SA-3 missile system that was used by the Serbs in the 1999 Kosovo air war to shoot down one “stealthy” F-117, as was widely reported, but also damaged a second F-117 seriously enough that it never flew again in the conflict–giving the F-117 the highest casualty rate of any US aircraft in that conflict.

Consider also, as Rasor and Sprey make clear, the values of a system that places the continued operation of a hardware system above the health, well-being and confidence of the pilots operating it. It literally reminds me of Upton Sinclair's “The Jungle” when nothing, not even workers' severed body parts, were permitted to stop the sausage machine.

Find the important and informative Rasor authored piece at Truthout at http://truth-out.org/news/item/9195-pilots-as-lab-rats-the-reprehensible-risk-taking-on-the-f-22-raptor and below:

Pilots as Lab Rats: The Reprehensible Risk-Taking on the F-22 Raptor

Thursday, 17 May 2012 09:58 By Dina Rasor, Truthout | Solutions<

Full article and comment below the line.

Continue reading “Winslow Wheeler: The F-22, Toxic Stealth, Secrets Screw Sick…”

2012/05/15

NIGHTWATCH: Saudi Arabia Begins to Absorb Bahrain — Is Qatar Next?

03 India, 04 Indonesia, 04 Inter-State Conflict, 05 Civil War, 05 Iran, 07 Other Atrocities, 08 Wild Cards, 11 Society, Blog Wisdom, Cultural Intelligence, Government, IO Deeds of War

global distribution sunni shia — Click on Image to Enlarge

Saudi Arabia: Saudi Arabia and Bahrain discussed a political union at a meeting in Riyadh on 13 May. The arrangement under discussion would allow Bahrain to retain its seat at the United Nations, but the two states would merge foreign relations, defense and economic policy, according to press sources. The details have not been released.

Bahrain's Prime Minister, the Army Chief of Staff and the Foreign Minister – all members of the al-Khalifa royal family — have stated their support for the union.

Comment: The King of Bahrain and the royal family are Sunni Muslims who govern a population of mostly Shiite Muslims. Thus, the news that a union with Saudi Arabia is under discussion has prompted widespread criticism that Saudi Arabia intends to make Bahrain a vassal state so as to keep the Shiites disenfranchised and subjugated.

On the other hand, the limited information in the public domain suggests Bahrain's administration of internal affairs will not be changed by the union proposal. Bahrain, by itself, is not defensible against an Iranian attack or subversion, but in a union arrangement with Saudi Arabia it would not be alone.

Saudi King Abdallah has warned Iran repeatedly against meddling in Arab affairs. This union is consistent with his policy decision to stop Iranian meddling in Arab countries as well as the spread of Shi'i Islam which the Sunnis consider a heresy.

One advantage of the union would be that it would bypass tricky conditions attached to US foreign military sales. Conditions of the sales include that US military equipment can only be used for defense, cannot be resold without US permission and cannot be used outside the recipient country without US permission. Under a union arrangement, the Saudis would not need to consult the US before sending Saudi forces equipped with US tanks and armored personnel carriers back to Bahrain, unless they chose to.

NIGHTWATCH KGS Home

Phi Beta Iota: It is entirely possible that Saudi Arabia is moving to a whole new level of global diplomacy, information-sharing, military alliances, and economic entanglements (DIME). Qatar is similar to Bahrain in multiple ways. Below is a map of the Sunni – Shi'ite spread. A religious war is brewing, not just Sunni – Shi'ite, but Pentecostals against Islam, Jews against everyone, Catholics in a panic, and so on. We say it again: counter-intelligence generally, and religious counter-intelligence specifically, is the ONE 21st Century aspect of the craft of intelligence that must continue to be secret and that must *explode* in the near-term. Note: within the eight “tribes” or communities, we include religion and labor organizations within the Civil Society tribe. The others are academic, commerce, government at all levels, law enforcement, media, military, and non-government/non-profit.

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