Public Intelligence Blog – Page 2566 – The truth at any cost lowers all other costs — curated by former US spy Robert David Steele.

0Shares

UPDATE: Brannan nominated. We wish him well. The drone program will be his death unless he wises up quickly and transfers the drone program to the military. During his tenure CIA will face legal challenges in world courts, direct assassination of not-so-secret CIA case officers operating with impunity, and a president very disappointed that CIA cannot spell fracking, much less understand the brave new world.

Poor CIA. Poor DNI. All that money and no respect. Here are the leading candidates and their flaws.

John Brennan. Honest — for all his flaws including having no idea what it takes to create a good analyst. Rotten attention to detail, but he has the confidence of the President, could be a compromise with the Zionists, and if he picked a couple of seriously deep aides, would set the stage for closing down the DNI and restoring the Director of Central Intelligence position, an immediate savings of several billion dollars. QUALIFIED

Director, Wall Street CIA. A Catholic, trusted by the Zionists, he would get along with the Secretaries of State and Defense, knows clandestine operations better than anyone else now serving, with the right team he could both resurrect all-source intelligence and set stage for termination of the DNI. QUALIFIED

Jane Harman. In the wings as the trade-off for Zionist silence on Chuck Hagel. More ego than brains, would be a figurehead kept busy with dinner parties. CIA would have to enlist the FBI for assistance in making sure all her guests show up, she really, really does not like empty seats at “her” table. DISQUALIFIED

Michael Morrel. Acting Director. Personally brilliant, without any knowledge of operations, easily lied to, and had no idea that Global Trends 2030 was a rotten piece of work. DISQUALIFIED.

Continue reading “Mongoose: CIA as Pawn — the Candidates — and the Nominee is…”

2013/01/072013/01/07

Matt Taibbi: Lies of the Bailout — US Government Ponzi Scheme

Commerce, Corruption, Government

0Shares

Secret and Lies of the Bailout

The federal rescue of Wall Street didn’t fix the economy – it created a permanent bailout state based on a Ponzi-like confidence scheme. And the worst may be yet to come

Matt Taibbi

Rolling Stone, 17 January 2013

It has been four long winters since the federal government, in the hulking, shaven-skulled, Alien Nation-esque form of then-Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson, committed $700 billion in taxpayer money to rescue Wall Street from its own chicanery and greed. To listen to the bankers and their allies in Washington tell it, you'd think the bailout was the best thing to hit the American economy since the invention of the assembly line. Not only did it prevent another Great Depression, we've been told, but the money has all been paid back, and the government even made a profit. No harm, no foul – right?

Wrong.

It was all a lie – one of the biggest and most elaborate falsehoods ever sold to the American people. We were told that the taxpayer was stepping in – only temporarily, mind you – to prop up the economy and save the world from financial catastrophe. What we actually ended up doing was the exact opposite: committing American taxpayers to permanent, blind support of an ungovernable, unregulatable, hyperconcentrated new financial system that exacerbates the greed and inequality that caused the crash, and forces Wall Street banks like Goldman Sachs and Citigroup to increase risk rather than reduce it. The result is one of those deals where one wrong decision early on blossoms into a lush nightmare of unintended consequences. We thought we were just letting a friend crash at the house for a few days; we ended up with a family of hillbillies who moved in forever, sleeping nine to a bed and building a meth lab on the front lawn.

CONCLUSION:

Continue reading “Matt Taibbi: Lies of the Bailout — US Government Ponzi Scheme”

2013/01/072013/01/07

David Isenberg: Iran – Nuclear Dog That Cannot Bark

05 Iran, Corruption, Government, IO Deeds of War, Media, Military

0Shares

Iran: the Nuclear Dog that can’t Bark

By David Isenberg

LobeLog Foreign Policy, 7 January 2012

Apart from death and taxes, one other thing has also appeared inevitable, at least for the past two decades: Iran will acquire a nuclear weapons capability.

Yet, despite all the near frantic demands for sanctions, clandestine action, sabotage, and outright military strikes to prevent Iran’s presumed inexorable march towards that capability, one thing keeps getting overlooked: Iran has not managed to develop a nuclear weapon.

How is that possible? As states go, Iran has a reasonably well-developed scientific and industrial infrastructure, an educated workforce capable of working with advanced technologies, and lots of money. If Pakistan, starting from a much lower level, could develop nuclear weapons, why hasn’t Iran?

That overlooked question was the subject of an important but largely ignored past article, “Botching the Bomb: Why Nuclear Weapons Programs Often Fail on Their Own — and Why Iran’s Might, Too” in Foreign Affairs journal.

In the May/June 2012 issue, Jacques E. C. Hymans, an International Relations Associate Professor at the University of Southern California and author of the book Achieving Nuclear Ambitions: Scientists, Politicians, and Proliferation (from which his article was adapted) wrote:

Chuck Spinney: Chuck Hagel is NOT a Hippie!

Cultural Intelligence

0Shares

Stupid title but the attached piece by Spencer Ackerman is quite relevant for sorting out the implications of a Hegel nomination for Secretary of Defense.

I am ambivalent over this choice. The central question is how an incoming Secretary of Defense will deal with cleaning out the Pentagon's Augean Stables. Nothing in Hagel's record (or in the records of the alternative choices) suggests an appreciation of or a desire to fix the problems at the roots of this mess (see here or here). That is not a show stopper for Hegel in itself, but more troubling is the fact that there is no indication anyone in the press, Congress, or the White House is aware of the need for (or wants?) a defense secretary with the background and cajones to take on this task. Moreover, no single person can do this alone. A serious effort to clean up the Pentagon will require committed deputies, but the lack of debate of over any choice of 2nd or 3rd level political appointees suggests the current ineffectual team will remain in place.

My guess: a lot of noise and smoke and mirrors in the debate of the next defense secretary will mask the decision to continue business as usual in Versailles on the Potomac. We will see.

Chuck Spinney

Is Chuck Hagel a Hippie? Only If You Ignore His Record

BY SPENCER ACKERMAN

Danger Room (wired.com), January 6, 2013

It’s looking like President Obama will nominate former Senator Chuck Hagel to run the Pentagon on Monday. It’ll mean a fight: for the last month, conservative critics of the former Republican senator have called him a wimp, insufficiently bellicose toward Iran, Hamas, Syria, the Taliban and other global malefactors. All of that overlooks the Vietnam combat veteran’s record in the Senate.

Spying on Americans’ communications without warrants? Have at it, said Hagel. A ballistic missile shield? Yes, please, and who cares if it angers the Kremlin. NATO’s 1999 war in Kosovo? Hagel was willing to flood it with U.S. soldiers.

Hagel earned his reputation as a skeptic of American military adventurism, as anyone who remembers his consistent criticism of the Iraq war will remember. But that criticism has blown Hagel’s reputation for dovishness out of proportion: after all, he voted in 2002 to authorize the war. National Journal’s Michael Hirsch insightfully argues Hagel’s reward for asking hard questions about the war is to have official Washington forget the rest of his record. So consider this a refresher.

Even as Hagel was making himself George W. Bush’s least favorite Republican, he aided Bush in crucial moments in congressional showdowns over the limits of presidential power in wartime.

Dolphin: Time Warner Blocks Al Jazeera — For Now

Corruption, Media

0Shares

Will Americans ever get to see Al Jazeera?

by Danny Schechter

Why does our media system attract so many uninformed and unbrave people who are locked into such predictable and parochial attitudes? Do they have an agenda that the public is unaware of?

Take Time Warner. Remember how it initially would not run the then new red white and blue Fox News on its platform in New York City, forcing it to cough up a high “per-subscriber fee” to get on the air? That was a clear commercial dispute with a bit of extortion thrown in, an attempt to protect their news channel, CNN, from being challenged.

Now that Al Jazeera has bought Current TV, a channel shown on Time Warner cable, the Time Warner megacorp became the first system operator out of the box to say it would not carry the new news channel that the Qatar-based network wants to launch in America, in much the same way that BBC set up BBC America to offer its programming to US viewers.

Even as Time Warner carries Russia Today, CCTV out of China and other foreign-owned channels, it is excluding this channel before they even know what it will offer. This could be a ploy to jack up licence fees – a la Fox News – but there is probably more to it.

Moises Naim: Mafia States Robert Steele Graphic

Communities of Practice, Cultural Intelligence, Ineptitude, IO Impotency, Key Players, Offbeat Fun, Policies, Strategy, Threats

0Shares

Mafia States:Organized Crime Takes Office

By Moisés Naím

Foreign Affairs, May/June 2012

SUMMARY: Around the world, criminal organizations and governments are fusing to an unprecedented degree, blurring the distinction between national interests and what suits the gangsters. Mafia states enjoy the unhealthy advantages of their hybrid status: they're as nimble as gangs and as well protected as governments, and thus more dangerous than either.

MOISES NAIM is a Senior Associate at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace and the author of Illicit: How Smugglers, Traffickers, and Copycats Are Hijacking the Global Economy.

The global economic crisis has been a boon for transnational criminals. Thanks to the weak economy, cash-rich criminal organizations can acquire financially distressed but potentially valuable companies at bargain prices. Fiscal austerity is forcing governments everywhere to cut the budgets of law enforcement agencies and court systems. Millions of people have been laid off and are thus more easily tempted to break the law. Large numbers of unemployed experts in finance, accounting, information technology, law, and logistics have boosted the supply of world-class talent available to criminal cartels. Meanwhile, philanthropists all over the world have curtailed their giving, creating funding shortfalls in the arts, education, health care, and other areas, which criminals are all too happy to fill in exchange for political access, social legitimacy, and popular support. International criminals could hardly ask for a more favorable business environment. Their activities are typically high margin and cash-based, which means they often enjoy a high degree of liquidity — not a bad position to be in during a global credit crunch.

But emboldened adversaries and dwindling resources are not the only problems confronting police departments, prosecutors, and judges. In recent years, a new threat has emerged: the mafia state. Across the globe, criminals have penetrated governments to an unprecedented degree. The reverse has also happened: rather than stamping out powerful gangs, some governments have instead taken over their illegal operations. In mafia states, government officials enrich themselves and their families and friends while exploiting the money, muscle, political influence, and global connections of criminal syndicates to cement and expand their own power. Indeed, top positions in some of the world's most profitable illicit enterprises are no longer filled only by professional criminals; they now include senior government officials, legislators, spy chiefs, heads of police departments, military officers, and, in some extreme cases, even heads of state or their family members.

Read full article (registration required).

Measuring the Mafia-State Menace: Are Government-Backed Gangs a Grave New Threat?

By Peter Andreas; Moisés Naím

Foreign Affairs,July/August 2012

Read rebuttal commentary (Peter Andreas) and response (Moises Naim) — no registration required.

Continue reading “Moises Naim: Mafia States Robert Steele Graphic”

2013/01/062013/01/06

Yoda: Learning, We Are….

Knowledge

0Shares

Beyond ‘absolute zero' temperatures get hotter

Posted January 5, 2013 – 06:30 by Flora Malein

It sounds like a contradiction in terms but scientists have reached temperatures that go beyond absolute zero in a lab, and get hotter as they do so.

Whereas we’re all aware of what happens when temperatures hit negative temperatures on the Fahrenheit and Celsius scales (hint: it gets really cold), the Kelvin scale is an absolute temperature scale in physics where it is not possible to go beyond 0 degrees Kelvin. Therefore, the lowest point that any temperature can reach is 0 K or −460 °F (−273.15 °C); at least that’s what scientists thought until till now.

When they cooled an atomic gas to extreme lows, known as ‘ultracooling’, physicists at the Ludwig-Maximilians University Munich and the Max Planck Institute of Quantum Optics in Germany created a gas that went beyond absolute zero.

They found that the atoms in the ultracooled gas attract each other and give rise to a negative pressure. Instead of standing still when they go beyond 0 K, the gas becomes hotter.

“The gas is not colder than zero kelvin, but hotter,” says physicist Ulrich Schneider, lead author on the paper that is published in the journal Science.

“It is even hotter than at any positive temperature.”

Read full article.

Continue reading “Yoda: Learning, We Are….”