Threats – Page 337 – Public Intelligence Blog

2014/05/082014/05/08

John Robb: Ukraine, Putin, and Open Source Warfare: In the 21st Century, Warfare is business by other means.

04 Inter-State Conflict, 05 Civil War, 10 Transnational Crime, Commercial Intelligence, Cultural Intelligence

Putin and Open Source Warfare

Is Putin using open source warfare?

Of course he is. Who sold him on the approach? Apparently, he has an advisor called Vladislav Surkov who is a science fiction writer. He recently wrote a short story (published under his nom de guerre) called “Without the Sky” about a many vs. many war. A type of warfare very familiar to readers of Brave New War.

“This was the first non-linear war. In primitive wars of the nineteenth, twentieth and other Middle Ages fought usually two sides. Two nations or two temporary union. Now faced four coalition. And is not that two on two. Or three against one. No. All against all. And what were the coalition! Not like before. Rare state included in them entirely. Sometimes, several provinces were on one side, some on the other, and any city or generation, or gender, or professional community of the same state – the third. Then they could change its position. Go to whatever site. “

In other words a swirling “bazaar of violence.” The author and TV producer Peter Pomerantsev also sees a connection between this approach an a corporatist view of the world. A world where “corporate raiding” can now be accomplished by states and the raids can be violent. I see that too.

In the 21st Century, warfare isn't politics by other means.

Warfare is business by other means.

PS: I wrote some interesting scenarios depicting economic warfare against Russia as a means of defeating it bloodlessly back in 2004.

2014/05/08

SchwartzReport: War

03 Economy, 06 Family, 07 Health, 07 Other Atrocities, 10 Security, 10 Transnational Crime, 11 Society, Commerce, Commercial Intelligence, Corruption, Cultural Intelligence, Government, Officers Call, Peace Intelligence

The War on Drugs has always been a charade, a flashy story to get the rubes riled up, whose real purpose was to justify increased law enforcement budgets, prison budgets, judiciary budgets, and inflated corporate profits for all the technology this bogus war involves. It has been a disaster at every level of social policy, albeit ever so profitable.

Group of Nobel Prize Winners Warns: The ‘War on Drugs’ has Failed
Agence France-Presse (France)/The Raw Story

The global ‘war on drugs” has been a catastrophic failure and world leaders must rethink their approach, a group including five Nobel Prize-winning economists, Britain’s deputy prime minister and a former U.S. secretary of state said Tuesday.

An academic report published by the London School of Economics (LSE) called ‘Ending the Drug Wars” pointed to violence in Afghanistan, Latin America and other regions as evidence of the need for a new approach.

2014/05/072014/05/07

Tikkun Rabbi Michael Turner: What Do the Suicides of Fifty-Year-Old Men Reveal? Public Health Emergency Exposes Economic and Existential Crisis

03 Economy, 06 Family, 07 Health, 07 Other Atrocities, 11 Society, Cultural Intelligence

What Do the Suicides of Fifty-Year-Old Men Reveal?

The Public Health Emergency Exposes an Economic and Existential Crisis

Margaret Morganroth Gullette

Tikkun, Spring 2014

ver the past decade of devastating recession and feeble recovery, there has been a sharp rise in suicides of men aged fifty and over — almost 50 percent, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. From 1999 to 2010, rates of suicide overall have gone up, but the steepest rise was for midlife men: those who used to be thought of as prime-age workers at the peak of their experience and ability. In that decade, the suicide rates for men aged fifty to fifty-four rose from 20.6 per 100,000 to 30.7 per 100,000.

Read full article.

2014/05/072014/05/07

Anthony Judge: Identification of Bullets – Human Right and Human Responsibility?

04 Inter-State Conflict, 05 Civil War, 07 Health, 07 Other Atrocities, 09 Justice, 10 Security, 11 Society, Cultural Intelligence, Peace Intelligence

Phi Beta Iota: We identify food that kills people — and demand it be taken off the market. Should we do the same with bullets?

Identification of Bullets: human right and human responsibility?

Introduction

Much is made of the implications of the arms trade and the spread of weapons, notably manufactured by the permanent members of the United Nations Security Council. This has become a fact of life and is accepted as such.

Curiously it is less evident whose weapons are used in the final killing of individuals in combat — especially the weapons used “illegally” by insurgents. The following is a brief exploration of the possibility of identifying who supplied the bullet which finally entered the body of the person maimed or killed.

Does the person so wounded — or the relatives of those killed — have the right to know who produced the bullet? Is this a fundamental human right or a matter of human responsibility?

Whereas not many years ago it would have been considered ridiculous to sell fruit individually identified by marks enabling their precise origin to be determined — even to the person who packed them — such labelling is now commonplace. The argument is that in the event of a threat to health associated with the product, whether fruit or other consumer products, responsibility can be precisely established. Such labelling may be a requirement governing import of foreign products.

If precise labelling can be justified for sources of life-giving human nourishment, because of their potential threat to health, is there not a case for denitrifying those products intended as a means of incapacitating individuals, possibly terminally? Do relatives have a right to the bullet by which a loved one was killed?

More generally is it appropriate to be able to indicate, with as much details as possible, who was responsible for the manufacture of the bullet? Should the bullets used in insurgency operations be a matter of public knowledge?

Fruit identification as a precedent

Continue reading “Anthony Judge: Identification of Bullets – Human Right and Human Responsibility?”

2014/05/062014/05/06

Lee Camp: FCC Sells Out Internet & Public – Net Neutrality? We Don’t Need No Stinkin’ Net Neutrality

03 Economy, 04 Education, 07 Other Atrocities, 10 Transnational Crime, 11 Society, Commerce, Corruption, Cultural Intelligence, Government, Idiocy, IO Impotency, Offbeat Fun, Officers Call

In an FCC ruling last week, they completely decimated the idea of internet freedom or net neutrality. They basically said that the corporations that can pay more can get faster internet service – this opens the floodgates for corporate rule online.

2014/05/062014/05/06

Winslow Wheeler: Buck McKeon Sells Out the Troops and the A-10 — C/HASC Rolls Big Bucks Against Little People

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

Supporters of the A-10 “Warthog” close air support aircraft in Washington and US combat Soldiers and Marines who have seen, and are seeing, combat in Afghanistan were stunned Monday to read about a decision of the Chairman of the House Armed Services Committee, Congressman Buck McKeon (R-CA). He is joining with the Air Force and wants to retire all of these extraordinarily effective combat aircraft, sending them all to the boneyard at Davis-Monthan Air Force base, starting as soon as next year.

Ever since Chief of Staff of the Air Force (CSAF) Mark Welsh decided to get rid of all of 300-plus A-10s in the active and reserve Air Force and the Air National Guard, the media and congressional hearings have been stuffed with information from combat veterans, pilots and defense specialists about how spectacularly the A-10 has been performing in Afghanistan and all other recent US wars in Libya, Iraq and Kosovo–going as far back as Operation Desert Storm in 1991.

McKeon's A-10 sell-out comes in the form of a ruse. His draft legislation, to be moved Wednesday (May 7) at the mark-up of the House Armed Services Committee of its FY 2015 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), creates a distinction without a difference with CSAF Welsh's retirement plan. McKeon's own description of his handiwork says he “would limit funds . to retire A-10 aircraft unless each such retired aircraft is maintained in type-1000 storage [which]. means storage of a retired aircraft in a near-flyaway condition that allows for the aircraft to be recalled into use by the Regular or Reserve Components of the Department of the Air Force.” Falling for the ruse either foolishly or knowingly, some media describe the language as “something of a compromise” or emphasize the “near fly-away” condition of the A-10 fleet after it is sent to the boneyard at Davis-Monthan. However, a simple check of what “type-1000 storage” means reveals that the aircraft will be made un-flyable and sealed in two layers of latex, which can be removed and the aircraft made operable only after considerable effort.

Continue reading “Winslow Wheeler: Buck McKeon Sells Out the Troops and the A-10 — C/HASC Rolls Big Bucks Against Little People”

2014/05/062014/05/06

SchwartzReport: Tennessee First State to Jail Women for Pregnancy Outcomes

06 Family, 07 Health, 07 Other Atrocities, Cultural Intelligence, Government, Idiocy

This is extraordinary legislation, and the latest in the Theocratic Right's war on women. If I were a fertile woman I am not sure I would live in Tennessee now that this is the law. This is what the world would look like if the Theocratic Right had its way.

It's Official: Tennessee Becomes First State to Jail Women for Pregnancy Outcomes
KATIE MCDONOUGH, Assistant Editor – AlterNet (U.S.)

Tennessee has become the first state in the nation to pass a law criminalizing women for their pregnancy outcomes. Republican Gov. Bill Haslam took the 10 days allotted to him to consider the advice of doctors, addiction experts and reproductive health groups urging him to veto the punitive and dangerous measure that allows prosecutors to charge a woman with criminal assault if she uses illegal drugs during her pregnancy and her fetus or newborn is considered harmed as a result. Haslam ignored these recommendations – and the recommendations of nearly every major medical association, including the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy – and signed the measure anyway.