Power Behind-the-Scenes/Special Interests – Page 2

2013/07/11

Chuck Spinney: Has the US Lost Its Grand Strategic Mind?

02 Diplomacy, 04 Inter-State Conflict, 05 Civil War, 07 Other Atrocities, 08 Proliferation, 08 Wild Cards, 10 Security, Corruption, Cultural Intelligence, Government, Idiocy, Ineptitude, IO Deeds of War, Military, Misinformation & Propaganda, Officers Call, Power Behind-the-Scenes/Special Interests, Secrecy & Politics of Secrecy

As Esam Al-Amin explained here, Mohamad Morsi made some colossal blunders during his one year rule of Egypt, as its democratically elected president. He was elected in what most observers regard as a reasonably fair election.

But the exclusive report by Al Jazeera (also attached below) reveals that the United States — which claims to support democracy in the Middle East and elsewhere — has been actively involved in bankrolling Morsi's opposition, and in so doing has continued its long policy of subverting Islamist democratic victories when they win fair elections (Hamas in 2006) or threaten to win fair elections (Algeria 1991).

Al Jazeera reveals how stark contradictions continue to rip through the three legs of the moral triangle that is US foreign policy — i.e., the contradictions between (1) the values we profess to to the world that we uphold, (2) the values we actually hold as demonstrated by our actions abroad as well as at home (don't forget the neo-fascist, non-accountable, hidden hand the emerging American deep state exemplified by the NSA scandal) and (3) the world we have to deal with deal with (in this case epitomized by the changing conditions of the Arab Spring).

Continue reading “Chuck Spinney: Has the US Lost Its Grand Strategic Mind?”

2013/06/012013/06/01

Allen Roland: Honoring Chalmers Johnson, Prophet of Truth + Empire Meta-RECAP

07 Other Atrocities, 10 Transnational Crime, Commerce, Corruption, Cultural Intelligence, Government, History, IO Deeds of War, Law Enforcement, Lessons, Media, Military, Misinformation & Propaganda, Money, Banks & Concentrated Wealth, Officers Call, Peace Intelligence, Power Behind-the-Scenes/Special Interests, Secrecy & Politics of Secrecy, True Cost, Waste (materials, food, etc)

Prophet for a Dying Empire

Every dying Empire has its truth telling prophet and America had its own with Chalmers Johnson. Johnson correctly compared the decay of the American empire, with its well over 600 overseas military bases, with the fall of the Roman Empire whereas the Senate becomes a wealthy corporate club and irrelevant compared to the ruling Military Industrial Congressional Complex

by Allen L Roland

Chalmers Johnson was a truth teller and prophet in a political environment where few would stand up to the interests and secrecy of the Pentagon and the intelligence community ~ and since his passing in November of 2010, many of his prophetic fears have been realized in the Obama administration.

Johnson, author of Blowback, Sorrows of Empire and Nemesis,The Last Days of the American Republic, talks in this video interview about the similarities in the decline of the Roman and Soviet empires and the signs that the U.S. empire is exhibiting the very same symptoms ~ overextension, corruption and the inability to reform. (Watch at least the first 20 minutes and also the very end where he predicts an economic collapse)

Johnson’ s main points were; The United States is treading the same three steps as the former Soviet Union;

Inability to deal with corporate corruption.
Imperial over-stretch is leading to fiscal insolvency ( 600 plus bases throughout the world )
Inability to reform, thus accelerating the inevitable fall.

Continue reading “Allen Roland: Honoring Chalmers Johnson, Prophet of Truth + Empire Meta-RECAP”

2013/05/20

Stephen E. Arnold: Google Implants — You Will Buy What We Are Paid to Tell You to Buy….

07 Other Atrocities, Commerce, Commercial Intelligence, Corporations, Cyberscams, malware, spam, Ethics, IO Impotency, Power Behind-the-Scenes/Special Interests

Google Implants By 2030?

From Marketplace Tech comes an interesting article on Google Glass and the projections into the future in regards to similar projects. The article, “Google’s Ray Kurzweil on the Computers that will Live in our Brains,” discusses how everything Google puts its hands on is changing how we search, retrieve and interact with information. As in nearly all articles these days discussing Google Glass Ray Kurzweil, the director of engineering at Google, leads the conversation.

Kurzweil posits that we will eventually move beyond devices that simply allow us to look at the world through a keyhole. Instead, he forecasts that people will be online all the time. He projects that devices post-Glass will ultimately be the size of blood cells able to be sent inside the brain and connect to the cloud around the mid-2030’s.

The article tells us more:

“In Kurzweil’s vision, these advances don’t simply bring computers closer to our biological systems. Machines become more like us. ‘Your personality, your skills are contained in information in your neocortex, and it is information,’ Kurzweil says. ‘These technologies will be a million times more powerful in 20 years and we will be able to manipulate the information inside your brain.’ As that data locked up inside our brain becomes searchable, inimitable human qualities suddenly become easier to emulate. Kurzweil denies that the searching and backup up of the brain itself is a bloodless pursuit, depleted of human emotion.”

Artificial intelligence and the melding of biology and machine is increasingly discussed in the media in reference to Google Glass. Will Glass evolve to Google impants? The bigger question is touched upon in this particular article: is it altruistic intentions or advertising that is driving this kind of technology?

Megan Feil, May 20, 2013

Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, developer of Beyond Search

2012/06/162012/06/16

Gordon Duff: US Government & extraterrestrial Technology

07 Other Atrocities, Augmented Reality, Corruption, DoD, Government, Intelligence (government), IO Deeds of War, Knowledge, Military, Misinformation & Propaganda, Politics, Politics of Science & Science of Politics, Power Behind-the-Scenes/Special Interests, Secrecy & Politics of Secrecy, Technologies

The Strange Case of Phil Schneider

I don't have the time needed or deserved so I will publish a series of youtube lectures, many are available by Phil Schneider.

Forgotten “Accidented” UFO WhistleBlower Touches Too Close

By Gordon Duff, Senior Editor

EXTRACT:

This is where the issue of Phil Schneider comes in. He is a UFO whistleblower who spent his short life saying what was, when he said it, seemed outlandish. We are now putting so many of his 30 year old technologies into use, so many are now public or at least to the advanced defense community that more and more of us accept all of it.

Article and Seven YouTube Videos

2012/03/182012/03/18

Berto Jongman: Economic Consequences of War

04 Inter-State Conflict, 07 Other Atrocities, 09 Justice, 11 Society, Commercial Intelligence, Corruption, IO Impotency, Misinformation & Propaganda, Money, Banks & Concentrated Wealth, Officers Call, Peace Intelligence, Power Behind-the-Scenes/Special Interests

Economic Consequences of War

New report released by the Institute for Economics & Peace analyses the macroeconomic effects of US government spending on wars and the military since World War II.

The IEP’s latest report, Economic Consequences of War on the US Economy, analyses the macroeconomic effects of US government spending on wars and the military.

The report studies five periods – World War II, the Korean War, the Vietnam War, the Cold War, and the Afghanistan/Iraq wars – exposing the effect of war financing on debt, consumption, investment, jobs, taxes, government deficits, and inflation.

The findings of the report show devastating trends for US tax, debt and deficit debates.

Download the report here

Key findings

The U.S. has paid for its wars either through debt [World War II, Cold War, Afghanistan/Iraq], taxation [Korean War] or inflation [Vietnam]. In each case, taxpayers have been burdened, and private sector consumption and investment have been constrained as a result.

Report highlights

The report shows the following economic indicators experiencing negative effects either during or after the conflicts:

Public debt and levels of taxation increased during most conflicts

Consumption as a percent of GDP decreased during most conflicts

Investment as a percent of GDP decreased during most conflicts

Inflation increased during or as a direct consequence of these conflicts

The higher levels of government spending associated with war tends to generate some positive economic benefits in the short-term, specifically through increases in economic growth occurring during conflict spending booms. However, negative unintended consequences occur either concurrently with the war or develop as residual effects afterwards thereby harming the economy over the longer term.

Phi Beta Iota: There appears to be a continued reluctance to address the real causes of our terrible situation: corruption across the board. No amount of intellectual posturing, whether in a book or in a conference, is a substitute for full transparency and the truth — the whole truth. The lack of integrity across all eight tribes — academia, civil society, commerce, government, law enforcement, media, military, and non-government/non-profit — is the ROOT CAUSE of our collapse.

2012 THE OPEN SOURCE EVERYTHING MANIFESTO: Transparency, Truth & Trust

2010 The Ultimate Hack Re-Inventing Intelligence to Re-Engineer Earth (Chapter for Counter-Terrorism Book Out of Denmark)

2012/03/102012/03/10

John Robb: USG – Corporate Cyber Scam II

10 Security, 11 Society, Academia, Blog Wisdom, Commerce, Corruption, Government, IO Impotency, Misinformation & Propaganda, Money, Banks & Concentrated Wealth, Power Behind-the-Scenes/Special Interests, Secrecy & Politics of Secrecy

You Don't Need a Cyber Attack to Take Down The North American Power Grid

The Obama administration simulated a cyber attack on New York City's power supply in a Senate demonstration aimed at winning support for legislation to boost the nation's computer defenses. Senators from both parties gathered behind closed doors in the Capitol Wednesday for the classified briefing attended by Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano, FBI Director Robert Mueller and other administration officials. The mock attack on the city during a summer heat wave was “very compelling,” said Sen. Susan Collins, R-Maine, who is co-sponsoring a cybersecurity bill supported by President Barack Obama. “It illustrated the problem and why legislation is desperately needed,” she said as she left the briefing. Bloomberg.

The US defense industry is in a full court press to get tens of billions in funding for cyberwarfare.

To get that funding, they need to dramatize the potential threat of cyberwarfare. Here's how. The central method of attack in cyberwarfare is systems disruption. Systems disruption is a way to break networks to achieve extremely high levels of damage (or, in financial terms, high ROIs). One of the best ways to demonstrate that type of attack is through a disruption of the power supply (usually with NYC as a target).

Two John Robb posts, comment, and see also — university grants at risk.

Continue reading “John Robb: USG – Corporate Cyber Scam II”

2012/03/08

David Swanson: 10 Reasons to Stay in Afghanistan

04 Inter-State Conflict, 05 Civil War, 07 Other Atrocities, 08 Wild Cards, 10 Security, 11 Society, Blog Wisdom, DoD, IO Impotency, Misinformation & Propaganda, Power Behind-the-Scenes/Special Interests

Top 10 Genius Reasons to Keep Troops in Afghanistan

David Swanson

WarIsACrime.org, 8 March 2012

1. When you're setting a record for the longest modern war, cutting it short just increases the chances of somebody breaking your record some day.

2. When Newt Gingrich, Cal Thomas, and Lindsey Graham turn against a war, keeping it going will really confuse Republicans.

3. If we pull U.S. troops out after they have shot children from helicopters, kicked in doors at night, waved Nazi flags, urinated on corpses, and burned Korans it will look like we're sorry they did those things.

4. U.S. tax dollars have been funding our troops, and through payments for safe passage on roads have also been the top source of income for the Taliban. Unilaterally withdrawing that funding from both sides of a war at the same time would be unprecedented and could devastate the booming Afghan economy.

5. The government we've installed in Afghanistan is making progress on its torture program and drug running and now supports wife beating. But it has not yet mandated invasive ultrasounds. We cannot leave with a job half-finished, not on International Women's Day.

6. We have an enormous prison full of prisoners in Afghanistan, and closing it down would distract us from our essential concentration on pretending to close Guantanamo.

7. Unless we keep “winning” in Afghanistan it will be very hard to generate enthusiasm for our wars in Syria and Iran. And with suicide the top killer of our troops, we cannot allow our men and women to be killing themselves in vain.

8. If we ended the war that created the 2001 authorization to use military force, how would we justify our special forces operations in over 100 other countries, the elimination of habeas corpus, or the legalization of murdering U.S. citizens? Besides, if we stay a few more years we might find an al Qaeda member.

9. A few hundred billion dollars a year is a small price to pay for weapons bases, a gas pipeline, huge profits for generous campaign funders, and a perfect testing ground for weapons that will be absolutely essential in our next pointless war.

10. Terror hasn't conceded defeat yet.