DefDog: Afghan Surge Flops, Viet-Nam Deja Vu

08 Wild Cards, 09 Justice, 10 Security, 11 Society, Corruption, Director of National Intelligence et al (IC), DoD, Government, IO Deeds of War, Military, Officers Call
0Shares
DefDog

More evidence, as if we needed it, of the lack of integrity of this administration…..

New Afghan War Plan Concedes the Surge Fell Short

Spencer Ackerman

WIRED, 1 November 2011

As the Obama administration winds down its troop surge in Afghanistan, it’s adopted a new political strategy for ending the war. And that new strategy represents a tacit concession that the best the surge could accomplish was rescuing Afghanistan from from the brink of total failure.

What was the surge for, anyway? In one sense, as explained by President Obama, it was merely designed to stop the Afghanistan war from deteriorating. But Obama’s generals promised that it would do more — that it would whup the Taliban into suing for peace. And in the broadest sense of all, it would contribute to the Obama team’s ultimate objective for the region: to “disrupt, dismantle and defeat” al-Qaida.

Judged in the narrowest sense, then, the surge worked. Afghanistan is no longer spiraling into greater violence. But it’s failed to accomplish anything beyond that.

Read longer than usual, very pointed analysis of lies, delusions, and failure.

Phi Beta Iota:  We've learned to expect a complete lack of integrity in our political, operational, and intelligence leaders.  This is so “deja vu” of Viet-Nam.  There is no accountability for failure in the US Government.

See Also:

Chuck Spinney: Time Favors the Taliban

Afghanistan Ground Truth: Deja Vu & Nested RECAP

Bob Gates: Flat Out Liar or Just Feeble? + RECAP

US Intelligence Lies to “Defer” to General Petraeus

Journal: Taliban Ramps Up North, Holds South + RECAP

Journal: Putin to Obama–Stay in Afghanistan + RECAP

Journal: William Polk on Afghanistan Non-Strategy Plus Consolidated Journal, Review, and Reference Links for Afghanistan

Chuck Spinney: Bin Laden, Perpetual War, Total Cost + Perpetual War RECAP

Marcus Aurelius: US at Permanent “War” + War RECAP

1961-2011: 50 Years of The Military-Industrial Complex

David Isenberg: Jim Clapper Claims Transformation — Robert Steele Comments on Each Misrepresentation

Worth a Look: Book Reviews on Intelligence (Most)

Marcus Aurelius: Mexico City “C4I4” Surveillance Center

IO Impotency
0Shares
Marcus Aurelius

Mexico City Opens “C4I4″ Public-Surveillance Intelligence Center

There are 13,000 surveillance cameras dispersed across this megalopolis, capturing everything in view, in real time and around the clock.

The cameras peek at streets and people from the tops of light poles, inside buses and over subway platforms, watching in the name of public safety.

The local government, headed by Mayor Marcelo Ebrard, this week unveiled an intelligence center where all these video feeds are monitored. It is a state-of-the-art “integrated” hub with a name that sounds like a futuristic space vessel: the C4I4.

Click on Image to Enlarge

Speaking inside the building’s circular nerve center — where 600 video screens carried scenes of residential streets and choked intersections — Ebrard told reporters that the C4I4 is one of the largest and most advanced public-safety command centers in the world.

Read more.

Phi Beta Iota:  Only  the Mexicans could out-do the US Air Force in Gorgon Stare foolishness.  This is a classic example of doing the wrong thing righter.  While C4I4 is clever (command, control, communications computing, intelligence, integration, information, invetigation) is also industrial-era thinking.  M4IS2 and the eight tribes, open source everything, are the new new thing, and since Western governments are not going to give up their delusion that they are governing, they will be the last to enjoy the benefits of hybrid governance that routes around governments and harmonizes outcomes on the basis of shared information.

Review (Guest): Votescam – The Stealing of America

5 Star, America (Founders, Current Situation), Congress (Failure, Reform), Crime (Corporate), Crime (Government), Executive (Partisan Failure, Reform), Impeachment & Treason, Justice (Failure, Reform), Politics, Power (Pathologies & Utilization)
0Shares
Amazon Page

James M. Collier, Kenneth F. Collier

5.0 out of 5 stars Hard evidence of Florida vote fraud – and a great read!, December 19, 2000
By  Jon Fairhurst (Washington State, USA) – See all my reviews

This is a “must read” for anyone who smelled a rat in the 2000 presidential election. Written eight years before the fact, the authors accurately predict Janet Reno's inaction and Justice Scalia's brazen decision, which effectively shut down the couting process. Not just theory, the Collier brothers personally discovered and present hard evidence of decades of Florida vote fraud.

The clues point to a systematic corruption of our voting system by the heads of the major mass media corporations. It's no surprise that Bush's cousin at the Fox news decision desk triggered the stampede of “BUSH WINS” graphics. And its no surprise that searching every mass media website will yield no hits on the word “votescam”.

This book does not lean towards either major political party. It simply champions democracy, freedom of information and the need to enforce our voting laws. Buy it. Read it. Take action to revive our right to vote.

Don't let the claimed 4-6 week wait dissuade you. I got my copy after a wait of only four days on December 10th, 2000.)

Vote and/or Comment on Review

See Also:

The Best Democracy Money Can Buy

Web:  www.votescam.org

Mini-Me: UK police can blanket-track mobile phones

Advanced Cyber/IO, Law Enforcement
0Shares
Who? Mini-Me?

Phoney net: UK police can blanket-track mobile phones

Britain’s Metropolitan Police have purchased a system which can identify, track and possibly shut off every cell phone in a 10-square kilometer area. The Orwellian system has raised concerns over potential abuses and violations of privacy.

The system, produced by the company Datong, uses a special transmitter, which emits a signal masquerading that of a regular mobile network, reports The Guardian newspaper. It forces all phones in the target area to release their identification codes for both devices and SIM cards they use. It can also track those mobile phones in real time.

Other equipment the company produces can intercept communications, including text messages, and force the devices to shut off from the network, presumably to prevent the use of mobile phones to trigger bombs.

In addition to the Met Police, Datong lists among its clients organizations like the UK Ministry of Defence, the US Secret Service and Special Operations Command, as well as security and defense forces in the Middle Eastern countries.

Human rights activists believe the system capable of blanket and indiscriminate surveillance violates privacy.

“It raises a number of serious civil liberties concerns and clarification is urgently needed on when and where this technology has been deployed, and what data has been gathered,” Nick Pickles, director of privacy and civil liberties campaign group Big Brother Watch said. “Such invasive surveillance must be tightly regulated, authorized at the highest level and only used in the most serious of investigations. It should be absolutely clear that only data directly relating to targets of investigations is monitored or stored.”

Lawyer Jonathan Lennon, who specializes in cases involving covert intelligence and Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act (RIPA), which mandates how the authorities can intercept private communication, says the system may not comply with the legislation.

“There needs to be clarification on whether interception of multiple people's communications – when you can't even necessarily identify who the people are – is complaint with the act,” he said. “It may be another case of the technology racing ahead of the legislation. Because if this technology now allows multiple tracking and intercept to take place at the same time, I would have thought that was not what parliament had in mind when it drafted RIPA.”

Neither the Metropolitan Police nor Datong commented to the newspaper on how the system classified as “Listed X” is used and whether or not it can be deployed during large protests and demonstrations or riots.

Phi Beta Iota:  Autonomous Internet is clearly needed, but so also must Occupy Wall Street learn how to pre-plan and execute “dead hand” procedures when digital communications are shut down.

Mini-Me: From Arab Spring to Death of the US Empire

02 China, 02 Diplomacy, 03 Economy, 04 Inter-State Conflict, 05 Civil War, 06 Russia, 07 Other Atrocities, 08 Wild Cards, 10 Security, 11 Society, Analysis, Commerce, Commercial Intelligence, Corruption, Cultural Intelligence, Government, IO Deeds of War, Military, Money, Banks & Concentrated Wealth, Movies, Policy, Power Behind-the-Scenes/Special Interests, Strategy
0Shares
Who? Mini-Me?

‘Arab Spring is about controlling Eurasia'

Includes Video (12:04)

The ultimate goal of the US is to take the resources of Africa and Middle East under military control to block economic growth in China and Russia, thus taking the whole of Eurasia under control, author and historian William F. Engdahl reveals.

­The crisis with the US economy and the dollar system, the conduct of the US foreign policy is all a part of breakdown of the entire superpower structure that was built up after the end of WWII, claims Engdahl.

“Nobody in Washington wants to admit, just as nobody in Britain a hundred years ago wanted to admit that the British Empire was in terminal decline,” claims the author, noting that “All of this is related to the attempt to keep this sole superpower not only intact, but to spread its influence over the rest of the planet.”

William F. Engdahl believes the uprisings in the Middle East and North Africa is a plan first announced by George W. Bush at a G8 meeting in 2003 and it was called “The Greater Middle East Project”.

Continue reading “Mini-Me: From Arab Spring to Death of the US Empire”

Review: Gods of Money – Wall Street and the Death of the American Century

5 Star, America (Founders, Current Situation), Atrocities & Genocide, Budget Process & Politics, Capitalism (Good & Bad), Complexity & Catastrophe, Congress (Failure, Reform), Corruption, Country/Regional, Crime (Corporate), Crime (Government), Economics, Electoral Reform USA, Empire, Sorrows, Hubris, Blowback, Executive (Partisan Failure, Reform), Impeachment & Treason, Intelligence (Government/Secret), Justice (Failure, Reform), Military & Pentagon Power, Misinformation & Propaganda, Nature, Diet, Memetics, Design, Peace, Poverty, & Middle Class, Politics, Power (Pathologies & Utilization), Public Administration, Science & Politics of Science, Secrecy & Politics of Secrecy, Security (Including Immigration), Threats (Emerging & Perennial), True Cost & Toxicity, Voices Lost (Indigenous, Gender, Poor, Marginalized), War & Face of Battle, Water, Energy, Oil, Scarcity
0Shares

William Engdahl

5.0 out of 5 stars Before Griftopia, There Was Liar's Poker and Gods of Money,November 1, 2011

This book deserves a much more detailed review that illuminates the author's early connection of Wall Street fraud and Washington neo-conservative lust for looting the world….a bi-partisan (never mind the 63 parties that don't get to play, or the 43% of the US voters who are independent). Liar's Poker by Mark Lewis blew the cover of Wall Street's practice of “exploding the customer” and Griftopia: A Story of Bankers, Politicians, and the Most Audacious Power Grab in American History later followed on John Bogle's The Battle for the Soul of Capitalism and William Greider's The Soul of Capitalism: Opening Paths to a Moral Economy, but William Engdahl is the one who nailed down the Trilateral Commission and Wall Street cabal focus on looting the world way beyond what John Perkin's discusses in Confessions of an Economic Hit Man.

Now the world is noticing. He appeared on Russia Today TV, which has eclipsed BBC as the English-language trusted source (and also excels at migrating its TV shorts to the web and to print), and here are some of his own words that illuminate how important his book is:

He says:

The ultimate goal of the US is to take the resources of Africa and Middle East under military control to block economic growth in China and Russia, thus taking the whole of Eurasia under control, author and historian William F. Engdahl reveals.

­The crisis with the US economy and the dollar system, the conduct of the US foreign policy is all a part of breakdown of the entire superpower structure that was built up after the end of WWII, claims Engdahl.

“Nobody in Washington wants to admit, just as nobody in Britain a hundred years ago wanted to admit that the British Empire was in terminal decline,” claims the author, noting that “All of this is related to the attempt to keep this sole superpower not only intact, but to spread its influence over the rest of the planet.”

William F. Engdahl believes the uprisings in the Middle East and North Africa is a plan first announced by George W. Bush at a G8 meeting in 2003 and it was called “The Greater Middle East Project”.

While I personally do not believe that Washington is behind the Arab Spring – the Department of State has always been incompetent at public diplomacy and CIA places dictators about the public (losers there go to counterintelligence and covert action staffs) – what matters here is that the Daydream Believers: How a Few Grand Ideas Wrecked American Power have created an Empire of Illusion: The End of Literacy and the Triumph of Spectacle.

The US Government is out of control, and it is out of control because a two-party tyranny (less turnover than the Politburo, in Peggy Noonan's great line for use by Ronald Reagan) has nurtured a combination of Wall Street legalized greed and neo-con military-industrial complex that has sold out the US taxpayer — 5% earmarks “buy” a 95% corporate hand-out, one third of that money borrowed in our name.

I take this book and the author's views with a small grain of salt, but the evidence is over-whelming. From Michael Kalre's Blood and Oil : The Dangers and Consequences of America's Growing Dependency on Imported Petroleum The End of America: Letter of Warning to a Young Patriot, we now know all we need to know about who is the greatest threat to the Republic and the Constitution: the two-party tyranny and their financial partners.

Occupy Wall Street is incoherent right now – when they get their act together, it is my hope they will focus on an Electoral Reform Act of 2012 – in my view, there is nothing wrong with America the Beautiful — all these enormous crimes against humanity not-withstanding – that cannot be fixed quickly by restoring integrity to our electoral system, hence our govenrment, hence our society and economy.

Vote and/or Comment on Review

Trip Report: Occupy Oakland, Electoral Reform

Uncategorized
0Shares
Click on Image to Enlarge

A quiet and peaceful Sunday afternoon in Frank Ogawa Plaza Downtown Oakland.

OWS Oakland reestablished after last weeks removal of the camp by Police.  No police presence.

Electoral Reform Hand-Out distributed, generally met with skepticism – a real reluctance to engage in specifics.