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Bomber Called C.I.A. Target Gift From God

By SCOTT SHANE February 28, 2010

In a posthumously released video message, the suicide bomber who killed seven C.I.A. employees on Dec. 30 said that his original target had been his handler from Jordanian intelligence, and that an invitation to meet C.I.A. officers at a remote base in Afghanistan had been an unexpected boon.

“We planned for something but got a bigger gift, a gift from Allah, who brought us, through his accompaniment, a valuable prey: Americans, and from the C.I.A.,” said the bomber, Humam Khalil Abu Mulal al-Balawi, a Jordanian physician who carried out the attack, in a 44-minute video posted on extremist Web sites Sunday.

FOR THE RECORD: Director Panetta has either not seen (because his staff filters his incoming) or has ignored direct offers of help, including one faxed to every seventh floor fax around his personal office.

Phi Beta Iota: CIA Director Leon Panetta is in way over his head, he's not even useful to the President, much less anyone else. He has been deceived by his own people and has no idea how many sordid details of incompetence and plain misrepresentation are being withheld from him. CIA has too many complacent over-promoted people who don't speak a foreign language, don't really understand foreign cultures, and have gotten by for decades on scraps from the table of foreign liaison and the tried and true practice of pretending that anyone who will take money is a valuable asset–all the while ignoring open sources and keeping the analysts locked in a closet far removed from reality. His whining about public and professional observations of “poor tradecraft” inspired a riposte on “poor management.” A careful examination of the individuals who died would have shown that only two of them should have been there at all, the Jordanian and one case officer–analysts, especially materal women with no field or combat experience, have no business being on the front lines. By the by, has anyone introduced secure video teleconferencing to the process of analyst-asset interaction? CIA is once again playing the numbers game, pretending that warm bodies and mediocre meaningless reports add up to “presence.” Slow burn, once again.

Journal: CIA as Poster Child For Dull US Intelligence

Journal: CIA’s Poor Tradecraft AND Poor Management

2010/02/252010/02/25

Journal: Is US Destabilizing Baluchistan to Take Over Gwadar Port? Is the Terrorist Iran Just Captured a CIA Asset? Is China Going to Sit Still?

04 Inter-State Conflict, 05 Iran, 07 Other Atrocities, 08 Wild Cards, Military, Strategy

photo tarpley new — Webster Griffin Tarpley

The Battle for Baluchistan: Iran Nabs Top NATO Terrorist with Help from Pakistan

February 25, 2010

On Tuesday Feb. 23, Iran announced the capture of Abdulmalek Rigi, the boss of the terror organization Jundullah, which works for NATO. The capture of Rigi represents a serious setback for the US-UK strategy of using false flag state-sponsored terrorism against Iran and Pakistan, and ultimately to sabotage China’s geopolitics of oil.

a gwadar new map JPEG — Strategic Port Gwadar

Phi Beta Iota: Dr. Tarpley's complete overview is well worth reading and we also recommend watching the short video of his interview with Russian television. To the right is a snapshot of the Port of Gwadar linked to its Wikipedia page–we have felt for some time that the USA is over-extended, out-foxed, and fooling no one, least of all the Chinese.

When US supply ships start going dead in the water from electromagnetic scrambling of their propulsion and navigation systems, we will know that China has had enough of this foolishness. The days of secure non-attributable false flag operations are OVER.

2010/02/242010/02/24

Journal: US Counterterrorism Hosed, EOP/OMB AWOL

08 Wild Cards, 09 Justice, 09 Terrorism, 10 Security, 11 Society, Ethics, Government, Law Enforcement, Methods & Process, Military, Peace Intelligence

Hurdles Stymie Counterterrorism Center

Tuesday, February 23, 2010

By ERIC SCHMITT and THOM SHANKER, The New York Times (Syndicated)

WASHINGTON — The nation's main counterterrorism center, created in response to the intelligence failures in the years before Sept. 11, is struggling because of flawed staffing and internal cultural clashes, according to a new study financed by Congress.

The result, the study concludes, is a lack of coordination and communication among the agencies that are supposed to take the lead in planning the fight against terrorism, including the C.I.A. and the State Department.

. . . . . . .

Continue reading “Journal: US Counterterrorism Hosed, EOP/OMB AWOL”

2010/02/242010/02/24

Journal: Individual Dignity & Collective Defense

07 Other Atrocities, 08 Wild Cards, 09 Justice, Civil Society, Law Enforcement, Mobile, Tools

Google execs convicted in Italy for Down syndrome video

MILAN (Reuters) – A Milan court convicted three Google Inc executives on Wednesday for violating the privacy of an Italian boy with Down's syndrome by letting a video of him being bullied be posted on the site in 2006.

Phi Beta Iota: The Italians made a mistake. Instead of using the video to aggressively convict the bullies of the Down's syndrome boy, they are shooting the messenger. This is just as ignorant and ill-advised as the police trying to criminalize Twitter texts and cell phone video of police brutality. The right of the people to bear witness cannot be undermined by the courts, IOHO.

2010/02/232010/02/23

Journal: Multi-Lingual Social Networking, Arabic First

04 Inter-State Conflict, 08 Wild Cards, Civil Society, InfoOps (IO), Methods & Process, Technologies, Tools

a social translation — Full Story Online

Site Hopes Automatic Arabic-English Translation Translates into Peace

A new site hopes the seemingly simple idea of eliminating the language barrier, letting you write in English and be read in Arabic — and vice versa — will cultivate citizen diplomacy between the Middle East and the West. It aims to reduce tensions at the grassroots level between two cultures that increasingly co-exist but seem a world apart.

Meedan, which officially launches Monday, lets users post stories and comments in English and have them automatically translated into Arabic, or the opposite. People who don’t share a common language can have an online discussion in near real time. The name, appropriately, means “gathering place” or “town hall” in Arabic.

Think of it as a social network filled with people you don’t know, but want to understand.

Phi Beta Iota: This is righteous, but as Howard Bloom addresses in Global Brain, it will taqke 50 years and it will not achieve the intended result until the children who START with this are adults in power. In the meantime, the adults in power who are both digitally and ideologically impaired, will continue to favor war to profit the few over peace to provide prosperity to the many.

2010/02/23

Journal: Free Twitter Rocks, People Rule in Haiti

Collaboration Zones, Collective Intelligence, Communities of Practice, Ethics, Geospatial, InfoOps (IO), Key Players, Methods & Process, Mobile, Policies, Real Time, Reform, Strategy, Technologies, Threats, Tools

Twitter Teams with Haiti Telco To Provide Free Text Tweets

WIRED 22 February 2010

Text messages have already raised $32 million for Haiti relief. Now Twitter is partnering with the devastated nation’s dominant telco to provide free text Tweets to Haitians so they can better keep in touch with each other and the outside world.

“Kevin Thau and our mobile team have recently arranged free SMS tweets for Digicel Haiti customers,” Twitter co-founder Biz Stone writes on the company’s blog. “To activate the service, mobile phone users in Haiti can text follow @oxfam to 40404. Accounts are created on the fly and any account can be followed this way.”

The move is much more than a gesture, as it might seem in place where limitless text plans abound and the standard of living is much higher. Under Digicel’s pre-paid plan Haitians pay $0.08 to text locally, $0.15 to text internationally and $0.23 to send an MMS. But considering that the country’s per capita income is about $1,300, that would be the equivalent of $2.46, $4.62 and a whopping $7.07 in the U.S. (which had a 2008 per capita income of about $40,000).

As has become almost routine now, the initial flood of information and pictures to emerge from the disaster zone reached the world via Twitter, and the use of texting is an especially crucial lifeline in the underdeveloped world.

Phi Beta Iota: BRAVO TWITTER! Who would have thought Haiti would be the silver lining for the poor. At one stroke Twitter hass connected scharitable giving from the 80% that do not normally give, with the bottom-up needs of the poor articulated via Twitter for free. Now if Twitter can team with others such as Nokia, Microsoft, and IMB to offer free cell phones to the five billion poor, with back office harvesting of the data and a global grid of volunteer translator educators in 183 languages, we save the world quick time.

2010/02/21

Journal: Haiti Update 21 February 2010

03 Environmental Degradation, 07 Other Atrocities, 08 Wild Cards

U.N. aid chief ‘disappointed' with Haiti earthquake relief efforts

UNITED NATIONS — The United Nations' top humanitarian relief coordinator has scolded his lieutenants for failing to adequately manage the relief effort in Haiti, saying that an uneven response in the month after the devastating Jan. 12 earthquake has undercut confidence in the world body's ability to deliver vital assistance, according to a confidential e-mail.

The criticism from John Holmes, the head of the U.N. Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, focuses on the United Nations' sluggish implementation of its humanitarian “cluster strategy,” which assigns key U.N. relief agencies responsibility for coordinating the delivery of basic needs in 12 sectors, including water and shelter.

Haiti: Earthquake Situation Report #22

WASH partners are currently reaching 850,000 people with 5 litres of water a day, covering 83 per cent of the target population. A 75 per cent gap remains, however, in the provision of latrines.

The Health cluster warns that there is a risk of a large-scale outbreak of diarrhea, given the present overcrowding, poor sanitation and lack of effective waste disposal systems in spontaneous settlement sites.

Rain brings more misery to Haiti earthquake survivors

Aid agencies warn of new humanitarian disaster if shelter and sanitation not improved quickly

Study: Quake damage twice value of Haiti economy

A report by three Inter-American Development Bank economists found last month's earthquake to be more devastating than the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami was for Indonesia, and five times deadlier than the 1972 earthquake that leveled Nicaragua's capital.

Category: Threats

Journal: Suicide Bomber–CIA Cluster a Gift from God