Afghans say poverty, not Taliban, main cause of war
Jonathon Burch – Wed Nov 18
“ Half our people have been driven mad–always in fear.”
KABUL (Reuters) – Most Afghans see not Taliban militants but poverty, unemployment and government corruption as the main causes of war in their country, according to a report by a leading aid group released on Wednesday.
After three decades of war, Afghanistan remains one of the poorest and least developed countries in the world. It is also one of the most corrupt. Unemployment stands at 40 percent and more than half the country live below the poverty line.
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Retired military officers cash in as well-paid consultants
WASHINGTON — Six months after Marine Lt. Gen. Gary McKissock retired in 2002, he did what many other ex-military leaders do: He joined the board of directors of a defense contractor, a company doing business with his former service.
McKissock also had a second job. The Marines brought him back as an adviser, at double the rate of pay he made on active duty. Since 2005, the Marines have awarded McKissock contracts worth $1.2 million, in addition to his military pension of about $119,000 a year. McKissock is one of at least 158 retired admirals and generals the Pentagon has hired to offer advice under an unusual arrangement.
Internet visionary fears an end to openness as Internet rivals consolidate power.
The Web, which began life as an open community where information and tools were freely shared across geographic, political, and social boundaries, is in danger of becoming segmented into a federation of closed camps led by a handful of increasingly powerful vendors, said Internet pundit Tim O'Reilly.”We're heading back into an ugly time,” said O'Reilly, during a keynote address Tuesday at the Web 2.0 Expo in New York City.
O'Reilly said efforts by Google (NSDQ: GOOG), Microsoft (NSDQ: MSFT), Amazon (NSDQ: AMZN), Apple, and other tech vendors—as well as publishers like Rupert Murdoch's Dow Jones—to create closed communities around their products and services are jeopardizing the freedom, and the spirit, of the Web. Continue reading “Journal: Web War II”
In Afghanistan, western militaries use radio frequency jammers to keep troops safe from remotely-detonated bombs. But those jammers and other gadgets have contributed to a “pollution” of the airwaves so severe that over 200 systems at Afghanistan’s main air base can’t talk to one another.
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Senate Panel: 80 Percent of Cyber Attacks Preventable
If network administrators simply instituted proper configuration policies and conducted good network monitoring, about 80 percent of commonly known cyber attacks could be prevented, a Senate committee heard Tuesday.
Phi Beta Iota: Below the fold see the technical threat slide from Dr. Mich Kabay, and accompanying words, as presented to NSA at the first public conference in Las Vegas in January 2002. We have learned NOTHING since then, and the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) is as catatonic as any so-called “Presidential” oversight agency could be…..our ignorance in the cyber-arena is halfway toward matching our ignorance in the intelligence arena–$75 billion a year for 4% of what the President needs, while we ignore 95% of the open sources in 183 languages we do not speak. At a more strategic level, we could buy peace three times for what we spend on war.
What would be the consequences of a second Islamic Emirate? My scenarios here are intended analytically, as a first-draft straw-man forecast:
The Nineties Afghan Civil War on Steroids
Momentum for a Taliban Revolution in Pakistan
Increased Islamist Violence Against India, Increasing the Likelihood of Indo-Pakistani War
Increased Al Qaeda Ambitions Against Britain and the United States
Phi Beta Iota: This is a classic status quo “Empire as Usua”l question. It is not only the wrong question, trying to answer it perpetuates the insanity that begot the problem in the first place. Steve Coll, author of Ghost Wars: The Secret History of the CIA, Afghanistan, and Bin Laden, from the Soviet Invasion to September 10, 2001, is a very smart, very well-connected mandarin with The Washington Post as his home base. The question that We the People should be forcing the White House and Congress to answer is this:
What If We Stop Spending $1.3 Trillion a Year on War, and Instead
Spend At Least a Third of That on Peace?
We never ask a question we cannot answer. The answer is clear-cut: we create a prosperous world at peace.See the two graphics below the fold.
The Subprime Crisis and the Terrorist Attacks on September 11 2001_2612
The time has come for the public to do its own intelligence on treason and fraud. This second part of the report names many names, including Henry Kissinger. The two reports together, in our judgment, amply justify a public demand for a Grand Jury to indict all named individuals.
From a Source in Moscow (First Two Paragraphs Only)
Russian trade ministry officials are reporting to Prime Minister Putin today that China is preparing to plunge the United States and European Union into the “dustbin of history” as major World economic powers over their, the West’s, deliberate collapsing of the present Global economic system in order to install their long sought after New World Order.
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China’s intent to carry out on their threat, these reports say, began this past week when, as perhaps best stated by one American financial analyst, China told the West to go “straight to hell” when the Chinese stated they would deliberately default on Trillions-of dollars in US backed debt security instruments called OTC because they were fraudulently created by Western bankers and as such are now considered an “act of war”.
