Journal: US Lacks Basic Intelligence at the Top

Collaboration Zones, Communities of Practice, Ethics, Key Players, Policies, Strategy, Threats

CNS News Full Story Online
CNS News Full Story Online

New Study Reveals Connection Between Enforcing Immigration Laws and National Security

Friday, October 30, 2009

By Penny Starr, Senior Staff Writer

A new study by the conservative think tank Center for Immigration Studies (CIS) reveals the connection between enforcing immigration laws and national security – sometimes in chilling detail.

Phi Beta Iota: It's all connected. Until the US Government understands the two graphics below (each leads to a separate briefing any adult should be able to comprehend), the Republic will continue its nose dive into the cluster of Third World nations we have abused and now will join for lack of integrity and intelligence among our leaders, military as well as civilian.

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Journal: US Naivete In Afghanistan, Neglecting Iraq

05 Civil War, 08 Wild Cards, 10 Security, Methods & Process, Military, Peace Intelligence, Policy, Strategy

AP IMPACT: Troops already outnumber Taliban 12-1

BRUSSELS – There are already more than 100,000 international troops in Afghanistan working with 200,000 Afghan security forces and police. It adds up to a 12-1 numerical advantage over Taliban rebels, but it hasn't led to anything close to victory.

Transcripts Of Defeat

London — THE highly decorated general sat opposite his commander in chief and explained the problems his army faced fighting in the hills around Kabul: “There is no piece of land in Afghanistan that has not been occupied by one of our soldiers at some time or another,” he said. “Nevertheless much of the territory stays in the hands of the terrorists. We control the provincial centers, but we cannot maintain political control over the territory we seize.

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Journal: Cry Freedom and Let Loose the Public Mind

08 Wild Cards, Collaboration Zones, Communities of Practice, Ethics, Policies, Reform, Strategy, Threats

Full Speech Online
Full Speech Online

Address On Iceland &The IMF, Debt Moratorium, And Tobin Tax

Webster Tarpley Infowars    October 22, 2009

Delivered by Birgitta Jónsdóttir of The Movement in the Icelandic Parliament, October 5, 2009.

Madam President. Dear countrymen. We have a choice to make. We are never faced with just one way, one solution. To assert so is a testimony to incredible tunnel vision on the reality that we live in. We are far from being the first and only nation that has had to deal with crisis and economic collapse. Perhaps what makes our position unique is that we are in an economic war ­ a war with nations that are using their positions of power to get what they want. Does that mean that all other avenues are closed? Are there perhaps other possibilities than chaining us with the burdens of foreign debt far into the future?

. . . . . . .

We now need to make decisions based on hope, justice, and the resurrection of pride which comes from living in a country which many people believe is almost uninhabitable. We can and should seek all possible ways to find common solutions. Britain declared war on our nation when they labeled us as terrorists ­ the British authorities have used economic terrorism against us by misusing the IMF, and using our EU membership application as leverage in order to extort from us what they want in the Icesave [1] debate. It is morally wrong to lay debts on the shoulders of the public which it had nothing to do with in the first place.

Phi Beta Iota: We salute the gentle lady from Iceland, who has a great deal more integrity and common sense than anyone we know now making bad policy in the absence of good public intelligence in the public interest.  This speech is IMPORTANT–it is time to bring down the false economy of scaracity and secrecy, and implement Open Money and all other things Open (see our keytone, Open Everything.

Journal: Demise of Obama in Afghanistan Part I

08 Wild Cards, 10 Security, Communities of Practice, Ethics, Peace Intelligence, Policy, Reform, Strategy
Chuck Spinney
Chuck Spinney

In my opinion, it is now almost certain that Afghanistan will wreck the presidency of Barack Obama.  As I feared, Mr. Obama has allowed the US military and its allies in the Democratic wing and Republican wing of the national-security apparat (there is no real difference between these wings) to ensnare him in the wreckage left by the Clinton/Blair/Bush not-so-grand strategy of “indispensable” power: coercive diplomacy punctuated by endless “[no-so] precision” warfare.  Supporting Sources for this Comment at end of posting.

Spinney Comments Continue After the Highlighted Article

Western export of the ballot box elixir is pure hubris

The absurd expectation heaped on Afghanistan's election is a fig leaf for leaders seduced by the allure of military power


Simon Jenkins  Guardian  20 October 2009 21.30 BST

Journal: Demise of Obama in Afghanistan Part II

08 Wild Cards, 10 Security, Communities of Practice, Ethics, Peace Intelligence, Policy, Reform, Strategy
Chuck Spinney
Chuck Spinney

Johann Hari: The three fallacies that have driven the war in Afghanistan

Case for escalating the war is based on premises that turn to dust on inspection

Johann Hari Independent Wednesday, 21 October 2009

Is Barack Obama about to drive his Presidency into a bloody ditch strewn with corpses? The President is expected any day now to announce his decision about the future of the war in Afghanistan. He knows US and British troops have now been stationed in the hell-mouth of Helmand longer than the First and Second World Wars combined – yet the mutterings from the marble halls of Washington DC suggest he may order a troop escalation.

Obama has to decide now whether to side with the American people and the Afghan people calling for a rapid reduction in US force, or with a small military clique demanding a ramping-up of the conflict. The populations of both countries are in close agreement. The latest Washington Post poll shows that 51 per cent of Americans say the war is “not worth fighting” and that ending the foreign occupation will “reduce terrorism”. Only 27 per cent disagree. At the other end of the gun-barrel, 77 per cent of Afghans in the latest BBC poll say the on-going US air strikes are “unacceptable”, and the US troops should only remain if they are going to provide reconstruction assistance rather than bombs.

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Journal: How NOT to Decide on Afghanistan

02 China, 04 Inter-State Conflict, 05 Civil War, 05 Iran, 06 Russia, 08 Wild Cards, 10 Security, Ethics, Government, Methods & Process, Military, Policy, Reform, Strategy, Threats
Failure of HUMINT
Failure of HUMINT

The Real Reason for More Troops in Afghanistan

Michael Gaddy LouRockwell.com    October 20, 2009Anyone with a rudimentary knowledge of our quest for empire over the past six decades realizes that Obama’s contemplation of whether to send additional troops to Afghanistan is simply those who control him providing Obama with the opportunity to look “presidential.” The decision to send additional troops was reached prior to the situational comedy of General McChrystal’s leaked “confidential report” to the Washington Post and Obama’s National Security Advisor’s public admonishment of McChrystal’s failure to follow the chain of command. All of this is nothing but a well-rehearsed, though poorly camouflaged hoax. Additional troops will be sent to Afghanistan within a very short period of time and Obama really has no say in the matter. The question is: why?

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Journal: “Free Obama” and From What….

08 Wild Cards, Commerce, Ethics, Government, Military, Policies, Reform, Strategy, Threats

Full Op-Ed Online
Full Op-Ed Online

Obama’s Delusion

David Bromwich

22 October 2009

Afghanistan is the largest and the most difficult crisis Obama confronts away from home. And here the trap was fashioned largely by himself. He said, all through the presidential campaign, that Iraq was the wrong war but Afghanistan was the right one. It was ‘a war of necessity’, he said this summer. And he has implied that he would accept his generals’ definition of the proper scale of such a war. Now it appears that Afghanistan is being lost, indeed that it cannot be controlled with fewer than half a million troops on the ground for a decade or more. The generals are for adding troops, as in Vietnam, in increments of tens of thousands. Their current request was leaked to Bob Woodward, who published it in the Washington Post on 21 September, after Obama asked that it be kept from the public for a longer interval while he deliberated. The leak was an act of military politics if not insubordination; its aim was to show the president the cost of resisting the generals.

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