Threats – Page 647 – Public Intelligence Blog

2010/11/142010/11/14

Journal: Taliban’s grip is far stronger than the West will admit

04 Inter-State Conflict, 05 Civil War, 08 Wild Cards, 10 Security, Analysis, History, InfoOps (IO), Intelligence (government), Military, Misinformation & Propaganda, Officers Call, Power Behind-the-Scenes/Special Interests, Strategy

editor spinney time — Chuck Spinney Recommends...

Afghanistan – behind enemy lines

James Fergusson returns after three years to Chak, just 40 miles from Kabul, to find the Taliban's grip is far stronger than the West will admit

Independent, 14 November 2010

The sound of a propeller engine is audible the moment my fixer and I climb out of the car, causing us new arrivals from Kabul to glance sharply upwards. I have never heard a military drone in action before, and it is entirely invisible in the cold night sky, yet there is no doubt what it is. My first visit to the Taliban since 2007 has only just begun and I am already regretting it. What if the drone is the Hellfire-missile-carrying kind?

Three years ago, the Taliban's control over this district, Chak, and the 112,000 Pashtun farmers who live here, was restricted to the hours of darkness – although the local commander, Abdullah, vowed to me that he would soon be in full control. As I am quickly to discover, this was no idle boast. In Chak, the Karzai government has in effect given up and handed over to the Taliban. Abdullah, still in charge, even collects taxes. His men issue receipts using stolen government stationery that is headed “Islamic Republic of Afghanistan”; with commendable parsimony they simply cross out the word “Republic” and insert “Emirate”, the emir in question being the Taliban's spiritual leader, Mullah Omar.

The most astonishing thing about this rebel district – and for Nato leaders meeting in Lisbon this week, a deeply troubling one – is that Chak is not in war-torn Helmand or Kandahar but in Wardak province, a scant 40 miles south-west of Kabul.

Read rest of this direct look at ground truth….

Phi Beta Iota: We are reminded by this piece of how the best CIA desk officers knew instantly, the day we announced going to war in Viet-Nam, that we had gotten it wrong, that Ho Chi Minh was a nationalist, and that we would lose. By the time Afghanistan rolled around, intelligence had become both jejeune and unethical (silent in the face of treason), and politics had become even more ideologically psychopathic and corrupt than ever before. James Fegusson has given us a very fine contribution–this is ground truth at its best.

and most especially:

Review: War Without Windows

Review: None So Blind–A Personal Account of the Intelligence Failure in Vietnam

Review: Who the Hell Are We Fighting?–The Story of Sam Adams and the Vietnam Intelligence Wars

2010/11/13

Journal: Who Dun It on the Deficit?

03 Economy, 07 Other Atrocities, Budgets & Funding, Government

Obama inherited a federal deficit that was spinning out of control (mostly because of decreased tax take and increased expenditures for automatic stabilizers, e.g. unemployment insurance), and pressure is growing to cut Social Security (perhaps the most efficiently run program in government) while placing Defense (one of the most inefficiently run programs) off limits. These political pressures are not new and in fact have been building up for years. So, as a first cut into a complex issue, perhaps it is time for the angry masses to ask which political party put them into the fiscal straight jacket that is setting them up for this horrible choice?

A. Democrats?
B. Moderate Republicans?
C. Right Wing Republicans?

Hint:

Green => Reductions in the burden of Gr. Fed. Debt (as measured by the debt to GDP ratio)
Red => Increases in the burden of Gr. Fed. Debt

2010/11/132010/11/13

Journal: Taliban Tet a Tet + Tet Offensive

04 Inter-State Conflict, 08 Wild Cards, 10 Security, 11 Society, Government, Officers Call, Peace Intelligence

Analysis: Nine years on, the Taliban have a message for West

By Sayed Salahuddin

KABUL | Sat Nov 13, 2010 1:44am EST

KABUL (Reuters) – When NATO leaders gather for a summit in Lisbon next week, where Afghanistan will top the agenda, they can expect a message waiting for them from the Taliban.

That message may well be a violent demonstration of their staying power, even though Washington and U.S. and NATO commanders have been talking up recent successes in Afghanistan before the summit and a strategy review by President Barack Obama next month.

This comes as many European NATO members begin to look at how long they can keep justifying their commitments to an increasingly unpopular war, and as Obama remains committed to beginning a gradual drawdown of U.S. troops from July 2011 before the 2014 goal set by Kabul to take total security responsibility.

Rest of article….

Phi Beta Iota: Morality is a strategic force and generally favors the indigenous fighting on their own land for their own values. It is costing us $50 million per Taliban body to fight the Taliban on their own ground. Obama needs advisors who have integrity, intelligence, and an instinct for the future.

2010/11/132010/11/13

Journal: Obama to Leave Democratic Party?

07 Other Atrocities, 11 Society, Civil Society, Cultural Intelligence, Misinformation & Propaganda, Power Behind-the-Scenes/Special Interests

White House: Obama Conducting Reign of Terror

Posted on 06. Nov, 2010 by Raja Mujtaba in US

Suspected White House leakers are on the run

By Wayne Madsen

President Obama was urged by the few White House insiders from whom he still takes advice to leave the country on his ten-day Asian trip, his longest trip abroad since becoming president, in order to not inflict any more damage to the Democratic Party in the wake of one of the worst electoral defeats for the party of an incumbent president in recent history. According to sources close to the White House, who put themselves in great danger by even talking to members of the media, the plans to have Obama leave for a visit to India, Pakistan, Indonesia, South Korea, and Japan are an attempt to get Obama out of the country while top Democrats can sort through the political disaster created for the party by Obama's increasingly detached-from-reality presidency.

Virtual political guerrilla warfare has broken out between Obama's inner circle on one hand and senior Democratic officials, including outgoing House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, Democratic Party strategist James Carville, former Demcratic National Committee chairman Howard Dean, and, behind-the-scenes, Vice President Joe Biden and former President Bill Clinton, on the other.

Phi Beta Iota: This is a remarkable “hit job” that will need much more corroboration. We see two underlying stories that merit exploration. First Story: Obama is scaring his own party. It took a lot to piece together all the little bits that have been hyped together here. Second Story: Obama is beginning to see that he can only win a second term as an Independent, without Biden and without Clinton II. What we do know is that Obama's advisors to date have been a mix of pogomists, pollsters, and political groupies. If he ever gets a grip on strategic reality and commits to restoring the Republic with Electoral Reform, he could still be the George Washington of the 21st Century. On this article, at this time, we stand with Barack Obama and not his detractors.

Complete Madsen reprint below the line so our military colleagues do not have to visit the other site.

Continue reading “Journal: Obama to Leave Democratic Party?”

2010/11/132010/11/13

Journal: Chinese Missile off US Coast?

02 China, 04 Inter-State Conflict, 10 Security, Intelligence (government), Military, Peace Intelligence

Chinese Submarine was not the first on US coast

Posted on 12. Nov, 2010 by Raja Mujtaba in Hot Topics

Sneaking subs into waters off the west coast — its happened before

By Wayne Madsen

The firing of a submarine-launched ballistic missile by a Chinese Jin-class submarine off the coast of southern California last Monday at the height of evening rush hour in Los Angeles was not the first time the U.S. Navy's anti-submarine warfare sensors in the Pacific have failed.

In 1981, a Soviet Victor-class nuclear submarine successfully evaded the Navy's Sound Surveillance System (SOSUS) network of underwater hydrophones, Towed Array Sensor System (TASS) ships, and P-3 sonobuoy-equipped aircraft and popped up off the Oregon coast alongside a Soviet fishing fishing trawler.

Phi Beta Iota: We only know that we do not know the full story. We do believe that China and Russia are furious over Wall Street to Washington financial irresponsibility. The Chinese have a sense of humor, having previously popped a submarine up directly behind a US carrier after sneaking through an entire carrier battle group. This could be related to blocking any further US military exercises in the waters around Taiwan. The US Government really does not “understand” how quickly Taiwan is going to follow Hong Kong into mainland control. Sadly, we cannot rely on the US Navy or the US Government to be open with its own public on what is known about this matter.

Complete Madsen reprint below the line so our military colleagues do not have to visit the other site.

Continue reading “Journal: Chinese Missile off US Coast?”

2010/11/122010/11/12

Reference: Israel False Flag Attacks on US Back to 1960′s–Fast Forward to USS Liberty, USS Cole, 9/11 and–oh yes, the package bombs…..

07 Other Atrocities, 08 Wild Cards

Israeli False Flag Attack on U.S. Motivated 1963 Senate Investigations – Newly Declassified Files

WASHINGTON, Nov. 9, 2010 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ — Fears of false flag and foreign funded covert operations designed to influence U.S. policy drove the Senate Foreign Relations Committee to launch exhaustive investigations and call for warranted enforcement of the Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA). A newly declassified March 17, 1961 memo unsealed and released by the National Archives and Records Administration on October 21, 2010 outlined the Senate's rationale for investigating Israel lobbying groups and other foreign agents active across the United States.

“In recent years there has been an increasing number of incidents involving attempts by foreign governments, or their agents, to influence the conduct of American foreign policy by techniques outside normal diplomatic channels…..there have been occasions when representatives of other governments have been privately accused of engaging in covert activities within the United States and elsewhere, for the purpose of influencing United States Policy (the Lavon Affair).”

The Lavon Affair refers to a false flag Israeli terrorist bombing plot code named “Operation Susannah” against U.S. targets in Egypt. It was designed to reverse U.S. policy pressuring British withdrawals and reverting control of the Suez Canal to Egypt. Israeli agents infiltrating as Arabs were discovered, arrested and criminally prosecuted in Egypt when their explosives malfunctioned, leading to a crisis in the Israeli government.

Continue reading “Reference: Israel False Flag Attacks on US Back to 1960′s–Fast Forward to USS Liberty, USS Cole, 9/11 and–oh yes, the package bombs…..”

2010/11/122011/10/22

Reference: Changing the Game

About the Idea, Analysis, Augmented Reality, Budgets & Funding, Collaboration Zones, Collective Intelligence, Communities of Practice, Counter-Oppression/Counter-Dictatorship Practices, Ethics, Geospatial, info-graphics/data-visualization, InfoOps (IO), Methods & Process, Mobile, Officers Call, Open Government, Policies, Policy, Real Time, Reform, Threats, Tools

ARE WE READY TO CHANGE THE GAME YET?

by Tom Atlee

Some people say Gandhi was about nonviolence. And he was.

But he is significant for something else that I believe is far more important:

He changed the game.

With no one's permission, he reconfigured the playing field of colonialism to a higher Game in which everything the British did in their smaller, narrower game backfired on them. Prisons, guns, threats and bureaucracies of control not only ceased to work like they used to, but actually generated more power for Gandhi's world-changing Game.

Gandhi's Game involved, in his words, “experiments in Truth” — a search for Truth, a bigger Truth, a common inclusive Truth, a win-win Truth in every situation. The British — and even many of Gandhi's compatriots — were not aligned to that Truth. They wanted victory, control, and righteousness. These things trapped them in their smaller game until, one by one, and sometimes wholesale, Gandhi's commitment to Truth won their hearts and minds — and Shift happened.

Continue reading “Reference: Changing the Game”