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anonymous

The Real David Petraeus Scandal - 0 views

www.theatlantic.com/...265127

geopolitics

shared by anonymous on 13 Nov 12 - Cached
  • It might behoove us, before we accept this nauseating spectacle as a permanent feature of life, to fill in as many of these blanks as possible. You can't do that in the dark.
  • At the risk of raising a question that is by custom excluded from discussion of American foreign policy: What if other nations behaved as we do? What if they started firing drones into countries that house people they'd rather were dead? Couldn't this get kind of out of control? Shouldn't the U.S. be at least thinking about trying to establish a global norm against this sort of thing (except, conceivably, under well-defined circumstances that have a clear basis in international law)?
    • anonymous
      anonymous on 13 Nov 12
       
      Imagine if Mexico did this kind of thing (targeting in the U.S.) in their cartel war. We would go ape-shit.
  • But in many ways this president is no improvement over the last one, and Exhibit A is the acceleration of a far-flung drone-strike program that is shrouded in the secrecy of the CIA. The vision implicit in this program is of an America whose great calling is to lead the world into a future of chaos and lawlessness.
  • anonymous on 13 Nov 12
     
    "When, in the fall of 2011, David Petraeus moved from commanding the Afghanistan war effort to commanding the CIA, it was a disturbingly natural transition. I say "natural" because the CIA conducts drone strikes in the Afghanistan-Pakistan region and is involved in other military operations there, so Petraeus, in his new role, was continuing to fight the Afghanistan war. I say "disturbingly" because this overlap of Pentagon and CIA missions is the result of a creeping militarization of the CIA that may be undermining America's national security."
anonymous

MI6 and CIA heard Iraq had no active WMD capability ahead of invasion - 1 views

www.guardian.co.uk/...panorama-iraq-fresh-wmd-claims

wmd iraq cia invasion

shared by anonymous on 18 Mar 13 - Cached
  • Fresh evidence is revealed today about how MI6 and the CIA were told through secret channels by Saddam Hussein's foreign minister and his head of intelligence that Iraq had no active weapons of mass destruction.Tony Blair told parliament before the war that intelligence showed Iraq's nuclear, chemical, and biological weapons programme was "active", "growing" and "up and running".
  • A special BBC Panorama programme tonight will reveal how British and US intelligence agencies were informed by top sources months before the invasion that Iraq had no active WMD programme, and that the information was not passed to subsequent inquiries.
    • anonymous
      anonymous on 18 Mar 13
       
      This makes sense, considering (in my view) the WMD was the *reason* but not the *cause*. I'd wager that even if it HAD been passed down, the Bush admin wouldn't have cared.
  • Butler says of the use of intelligence: "There were ways in which people were misled or misled themselves at all stages."When it was suggested to him that the body that probably felt most misled of all was the British public, Butler replied: "Yes, I think they're, they're, they got every reason think that."
  • ...3 more annotations...
  • The programme says that MI6 stood by claims that Iraq was buying uranium from Niger, though these were dismissed by other intelligence agencies, including the French.
  • It also shows how claims by Iraqis were treated seriously by elements in MI6 and the CIA even after they were exposed as fabricated including claims, notably about alleged mobile biological warfare containers, made by Rafid Ahmed Alwan al-Janabi, a German source codenamed Curveball. He admitted to the Guardian in 2011 that all the information he gave to the west was fabricated.
    • anonymous
      anonymous on 18 Mar 13
       
      As I learned while reading "The Secret War," the CIA exhibited some laughably awful trust in sources that basically told them what they wanted to hear.
  • Panorama says it asked for an interview with Blair but he said he was "too busy".
    • anonymous
      anonymous on 18 Mar 13
       
      *Snort*. Ha ha.
  • anonymous on 18 Mar 13
     
    "MI6 and CIA were told before invasion that Iraq had no active WMD BBC's Panorama reveals fresh evidence that agencies dismissed intelligence from Iraqi foreign minister and spy chief"
anonymous

Above the Tearline: Fallout from the bin Laden Operation - 0 views

www.stratfor.com/...ne-fallout-bin-laden-operation

geopolitics Pakistan cia

shared by anonymous on 21 Jun 11 - Cached
  • When the CIA operates overseas, they are primarily focused on developing human assets, foreign nationals, in four categories. The first would be the intelligence services; number two would be within the military services; number three would be the diplomatic corps of that respective country; and the fourth being the police or security services.
  • In most cases, the CIA develops informants in foreign countries simply by paying them, giving them cash under the table to provide that information to them. I would also think that due to the highly compartmented nature of this case that the individuals that were being used inside the Pakistani government to provide information were used in an unwitting fashion, meaning they would have no idea that bin Laden was the target set.
  • Another aspect to this story would be it is highly probable that the ISI, the Pakistani intelligence service, conducted their own internal security investigation — some would call it a witch hunt — to identify two different things: one, who helped hide bin Laden, if anybody; and the second being who has helped the CIA.
  • anonymous on 21 Jun 11
     
    "Vice President of Intelligence Fred Burton uses the arrest of five Pakistani nationals for helping the CIA with the bin Laden safe-house surveillance to examine how the CIA operates in foreign countries."
anonymous

Pakistan's Uneasy Relationship with the United States - 0 views

www.stratfor.com/...asy-relationship-united-states

geopolitics

shared by anonymous on 12 Apr 11 - Cached
  • Pasha’s central demand in the meeting with his American counterpart was reportedly that the United States hand over more responsibility for operations currently carried out by the CIA over Pakistani soil.
  • this point is rendered moot by the fact that Washington would almost certainly never allow the ISI – seen as a hostile intelligence agency – to have access to some of America’s most secret technology.
  • These demands reflect the general Pakistani complaint that it is not seen as an equal by the U.S. government.
  • ...2 more annotations...
  • The United States knows that Pakistan is a critical ally in the Afghan War due to the intelligence it can provide on the various strands of Taliban operating in the country, but it simply does not trust the Pakistanis enough to hand over UAV technology or control over UAV strikes to Islamabad.
  • The Pakistanis see an opportunity in the current geopolitical environment to garner concessions from Washington that it would otherwise not be able to demand. Washington is distracted by myriad crises in the Arab world at the moment and AfPak is no longer the main course on its plate, as was the case for some time in the earlier days of the Obama presidency.
  • anonymous on 12 Apr 11
     
    "Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) chief Lt. Gen. Ahmed Shuja Pasha visited Washington on Monday and met with CIA Director Leon Panetta. The trip gave Islamabad a chance to express its anger over the Raymond Davis affair. The CIA contractor's shooting on the streets of Lahore of two Pakistani citizens - followed by his lengthy detention and subsequent release - has generated waves of criticism amid the Pakistani populace, and has plunged the ISI-CIA relationship into a state of tension that surpasses the normal uneasiness that has always plagued the alliance between Washington and Islamabad."
anonymous

Hiding in Plain Sight - The Problem with Pakistani Intelligence - 0 views

www.stratfor.com/...roblems-pakistani-intelligence

shared by anonymous on 04 May 11 - Cached
  • Clearly, Pakistan is coming under a great deal of pressure to explain how authorities in the country were not aware that the world’s most wanted man was enjoying safe haven for years in a large facility in the heart of the country.
  • It is no secret that Pakistan’s army and foreign intelligence service, the Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) directorate, actively cultivated a vast array of Islamist militants – both local and foreign, from the early 1980s until at least the events of Sept. 11, 2001 – as instruments of foreign policy.
  • the policy of backing Islamist militants for power projection vis-a-vis India and Afghanistan had been in place for more than 20 years, and was instrumental in creating a large murky spatial nexus of local and foreign militants (specifically al Qaeda) that had complex relations with elements within and close to state security organs.
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  • One of the key reasons for this situation is that while the stakeholders of the country (civil as well as military) are engaged in a fierce struggle against local and foreign Islamist insurgents, significant societal forces and sympathetic individuals from within the state are providing support to jihadists. But it’s more problematic that there are no quick fixes for this state of affairs. Further complicating this situation is that the U.S. objectives for the region require Islamabad to address these issues on a fast-track basis.
  • anonymous on 04 May 11
     
    "The fallout continued Tuesday from the revelation that until his death at the hands of U.S. forces on May 2, al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden been living in a large compound not far from the Pakistani capital. A number of senior U.S. officials issued tough statements against Pakistan. President Barack Obama's counterterrorism adviser John Brennan said that while there was no evidence to suggest that Pakistani officials knew that bin Laden was living at the facility, the possibility could not be ruled out. The chairwoman of the U.S. Senate's Select Intelligence Committee, Diane Feinstein, sought more details from the CIA about the Pakistani role and warned that Congress could dock financial assistance to Islamabad if it was found that the al Qaeda leader had been harbored by state officials. CIA chief Leon Panetta disclosed that American officials feared that Pakistan could have undermined the operation by leaking word to its targets."
anonymous

Ukraine: On the Edge of Empires - 0 views

www.stratfor.com/...litical_journey_part_6_ukraine

shared by anonymous on 10 Feb 14 - No Cached
  • Uzhgorod today is on the Slovakian border, about 30 miles from Poland, 15 miles from Hungary and 50 miles from Romania. When my father was growing up, the borders moved constantly, and knowing these languages mattered. You were never sure what you'd be a citizen or subject of next or who would be aiming a rifle at you.
  • perhaps nowhere was there as much suffering from living on the edge than in Ukraine. Ukraine was caught between Stalin and Hitler, between planned famines and outright slaughter, to be relieved only by the grinding misery of post-Stalin communism. No European country suffered as much in the 20th century as Ukraine. From 1914 until 1945, Ukraine was as close to hell as one can reach in this life.
  • Ukraine was, oddly enough, shaped by Norsemen, who swept down and set up trading posts, eventually ruling over some local populations.
  • ...28 more annotations...
  • they came as merchants rather than conquerors, creating a city, Kiev, at the point where the extraordinarily wide Dnieper River narrows.
  • The flat country is made for internal conflict and dissension, and the hunger for a foreigner to come and stabilize a rich land is not always far from Ukrainians' thoughts.
  • Ukraine created Russia or vice versa. Suffice it to say, they developed together. That is more important than who did what to whom.
  • Consider the way they are said to have chosen their religion. Volodymyr, a pagan ruler, decided that he needed a modern religion. He considered Islam and rejected it because he wanted to drink. He considered Catholicism and rejected it because he had lots of concubines he didn't want to give up. He finally decided on Orthodox Christianity, which struck him as both beautiful and flexible.
  • As Reid points out, there were profound consequences: "By choosing Christianity rather than Islam, Volodymyr cast Rus' ambitions forever in Europe rather than Asia, and by taking Christianity from Byzantium rather than Rome he bound the future Russians, Ukrainians and Belarusians together in Orthodoxy, fatally dividing them from their Catholic neighbors the Poles."
  • I suspect that while Volodymyr liked his drink and his women, he was most concerned with finding a balance between powers and chose Byzantium to create space for Ukraine.
  • What makes this position unique is that Ukraine is independent and has been so for 18 years. This is the longest period of Ukrainian independence in centuries.
  • People in the west want to be part of the European Union. People in the east want to be closer to the Russians. The Ukrainians want to remain independent but not simply independent.
  • Ukraine is as important to Russian national security as Scotland is to England or Texas is to the United States.
  • In the hands of an enemy, these places would pose an existential threat to all three countries. Therefore, rumors to the contrary, neither Scotland nor Texas is going anywhere. Nor is Ukraine, if Russia has anything to do with it.
  • And this reality shapes the core of Ukrainian life. In a fundamental sense, geography has imposed limits on Ukrainian national sovereignty and therefore on the lives of Ukrainians.
  • From a purely strategic standpoint, Ukraine is Russia's soft underbelly.
  • Ukraine anchors Russian power in the Carpathians.
  • If Ukraine is under the influence or control of a Western power, Russia's (and Belarus') southern flank is wide open along an arc running from the Polish border east almost to Volgograd then south to the Sea of Azov, a distance of more than 1,000 miles, more than 700 of which lie along Russia proper. There are few natural barriers.
  • For Russia, Ukraine is a matter of fundamental national security. For a Western power, Ukraine is of value only if that power is planning to engage and defeat Russia
  • from the Russian point of view it is fundamental, regardless of what anyone is thinking of at the moment
  • Ukraine controls Russia's access to the Black Sea and therefore to the Mediterranean. The ports of Odessa and Sevastopol provide both military and commercial access for exports, particularly from southern Russia. It is also a critical pipeline route for sending energy to Europe, a commercial and a strategic requirement for Russia, since energy has become a primary lever for influencing and controlling other countries, including Ukraine.
  • This is why the Orange Revolution in Ukraine in 2004 was critical in transforming Russia's view of the West and its relationship to Ukraine.
  • Following the breakup of the Soviet Union, Ukraine had a series of governments that remained aligned with Russia. In the 2004 presidential election, the seemingly pro-Russian candidate, Viktor Yanukovich, emerged the winner in an election that many claimed was fraudulent. Crowds took to the streets and forced Yanukovich's resignation, and he was replaced by a pro-Western coalition.
  • The Russians charged that the peaceful uprising was engineered by Western intelligence agencies, particularly the CIA and MI6, which funneled money into pro-Western NGOs and political parties.
  • Whether this was an intelligence operation or a fairly open activity, there is no question that American and European money poured into Ukraine. And whether it came from warm-hearted reformers or steely eyed CIA operatives didn't matter in the least to Vladimir Putin.
  • Putin spent the next six years working to reverse the outcome, operating both openly and covertly to split the coalition and to create a pro-Russian government.
  • On the day we arrived in Kiev, two things were going on.
  • First there were demonstrations under way protesting government tax policy. Second, Yanukovich was in Belgium for a summit with the European Union.
  • The demonstrations were linked to a shift in tax law that increased taxes on small-business owners.
  • I have not been to other Ukrainian demonstrations but have been present at various other demonstrations around the world, and most of those were what some people in Texas call a "goat rodeo." I have never seen one of those, either, but I gather they aren't well-organized. This demonstration did not strike me as a goat rodeo.
  • This actually matters.
  • It just didn't seem that way to me. There were ample police in the side streets, but they were relaxed and not in riot gear. I was told that the police with riot gear were hidden in courtyards and elsewhere. I couldn't prove otherwise. But the demonstration struck me as too well-organized.
  • anonymous on 10 Feb 14
     
    "The name "Ukraine" literally translates as "on the edge." It is a country on the edge of other countries, sometimes part of one, sometimes part of another and more frequently divided. In the 17th and 18th centuries, it was divided between Russia, Poland and the Ottoman Empire. In the 19th century, it was divided between Russia and Austria-Hungary. And in the 20th century, save for a short period of independence after World War I, it became part of the Soviet Union. Ukraine has been on the edge of empires for centuries."
anonymous

Leaked report shows high civilian death toll from CIA drone strikes - 0 views

www.salon.com/...th_toll_from_cia_drone_strikes

shared by anonymous on 22 Jul 13 - No Cached
  • The leaked document – which the Bureau obtained from three separate sources – is based on field reports by government officials rather than on media coverage. The Bureau understands that the document is continually updated as attacks occur – although the copy obtained ends with a strike on October 24 2009.
  • Read the full internal Pakistani document.
  • Each tribal area such as North Waziristan is administered by a Political Agent and his assistants. Beneath them are agents known as tehsildars and naibs who gather information when drone strikes occur – the names and identities of those killed, damage to property and so on. Additional information is also drawn from the khassadar - the local tribal police – and from paid informants in villages.
  • ...2 more annotations...
  • Ambassador Rustan Shah Mohmand, who was a senior administrator in the tribal areas for 25 years between 1973 and 1998, cautions that the released file might not be the fullest data available.Noting that Pakistan’s military is responsible for security in FATA, he told the Bureau: ‘Tribal documents might present a broad picture. But any accuracy is dependent on what data the military chooses to release to or withhold from the political agents. In the last eight years, for example, no precise casualty figures have ever been submitted to Pakistan’s parliament.’
  • ‘How come the same civil servants are feeding one kind of data to the Peshawar High Court and another kind of data to the FATA secretariat?’ asked Shahzad Akbar, the Pakistani barrister behind the successful Peshawar case. ‘Are they fudging the numbers based on who was on the receiving end?’US counter-terrorism officials declined to comment on the specifics of the leaked document, though referred the Bureau to recent comments by both President Obama and CIA Director Brennan stating that the US goes to great lengths to limit civilian deaths in covert drone strikes.
  • anonymous on 22 Jul 13
     
    "A secret document obtained by the Bureau of Investigative Journalism reveals for the first time the Pakistan government's internal assessment of dozens of drone strikes, and shows scores of civilian casualties."
anonymous

The Egyptian Military's Defining Moment - 0 views

www.stratfor.com/...tian-militarys-defining-moment

egypt geopolitics

shared by anonymous on 11 Feb 11 - Cached
  • By the time the Egyptian ambassador to the United States cleared up the matter on CNN, the crowd felt betrayed and seemed no longer to care about the significant distinction. They did not want power to be ceded. They wanted Mubarak gone and they wanted the military to take care of the matter.
  • The fact that Mubarak was clinging to the constitution and the crowds were in effect calling for a coup represented a kind of irony, but ultimately not much of one.
  • There is a constitution and Mubarak is the president. If he is simply forced out, the status of the constitution is in doubt and with it, the regime that the military founded under Nasser. Mubarak wanted to serve out his term, but was prepared to cede practical power. That, from their point of view, should have been enough.
  • ...3 more annotations...
  • The other argument was that at this point the crowds were not asking for regime change, remaining focused on Mubarak. If the military resisted and the crowds turned on them, they would be calling for regime change and with it, everything would be up in the air. Far better to violate the letter of the constitution and depose Mubarak, then risk destroying it all by protecting Mubarak; far better to capitulate to the crowds than to fire on them.
  • Both sides had the same fear — regime change.
  • The choices involved the fate of the nation and the military and one can imagine the arguments, people changing sides, decisions quickly reversed. The players were as confused as the observers.
  • anonymous on 11 Feb 11
     
    "It was a night of watching. What was being watched was the Egyptian military, faced with a defining moment. President Hosni Mubarak was expected to resign today. People ranging from the head of the CIA to Egyptian government officials to the crowds in the streets clearly expected it to happen. Obviously, word had leaked out from sources close to Mubarak that he had made the decision to go. Yet when he made his speech today, he did not resign. "
anonymous

The Death of bin Laden and a Strategic Shift in Washington - 1 views

www.stratfor.com/...and-strategic-shift-washington

geopolitics

shared by anonymous on 03 May 11 - Cached
  • Together, the events create the conditions for the U.S. president to expand his room to maneuver in the war in Afghanistan and ultimately reorient U.S. foreign-policy priorities.
  • With the death of bin Laden, a plausible, if not altogether accurate, political narrative in the United States can develop, claiming that the mission in Afghanistan has been accomplished.
  • From Langley, Petraeus can no longer be the authoritative military voice on the war effort in Afghanistan. Obama has retained Petraeus as a senior member of the administration while simultaneously isolating him.
  • ...3 more annotations...
  • The U.S. political leadership faced difficulty in shaping an exit strategy from Afghanistan with Petraeus in command because the general continued to insist that the war was going reasonably well.
  • We are not saying that bin Laden’s death and Petraeus’ new appointment are anything beyond coincidental. We are saying that the confluence of the two events creates politically strategic opportunities for the U.S. administration that did not exist before, the most important of which is the possibility for a dramatic shift in U.S. strategy in Afghanistan.
  • Petraeus is now being removed from the Afghanistan picture. Bin Laden has already been removed. With his death, an argument in the United States can be made that the U.S. mission has been accomplished and that, while there may be room for some manner of special-operations counterterrorism forces, the need for additional U.S. troops in Afghanistan no longer exists.
  • anonymous on 03 May 11
     
    "Two apparently distinct facts have drawn our attention. The first and most obvious is U.S. President Barack Obama's announcement late May 1 that Osama bin Laden had been killed. The second is Obama's April 28 announcement that Gen. David Petraeus, commander of U.S. forces in Afghanistan, will replace Leon Panetta as CIA director. Together, the events create the conditions for the U.S. president to expand his room to maneuver in the war in Afghanistan and ultimately reorient U.S. foreign-policy priorities. "
anonymous

Former CIA-backed dictator Noriega sues video game for accurate portrayal of his atroci... - 0 views

www.rawstory.com/...te-portrayal-of-his-atrocities

Pocket

shared by anonymous on 18 Jul 14 - No Cached
  • anonymous on 18 Jul 14
     
    Former Panamanian dictator Manuel Noriega is suing the video game publisher Activision Blizzard for using his likeness in Call of Duty: Black Ops II without his permission, The Los Angeles Times reports.
  • anonymous on 18 Jul 14
     
    Former Panamanian dictator Manuel Noriega is suing the video game publisher Activision Blizzard for using his likeness in Call of Duty: Black Ops II without his permission, The Los Angeles Times reports.
anonymous

Libyan Report Card - 0 views

www.stratfor.com/...libyan-report-card

geopolitics libya

shared by anonymous on 03 Apr 13 - Cached
  • The authorities in the capital of Tripoli openly acknowledge the fact that they do not monopolize the use of force and have wisely opted for compromise and arbitration in eastern Libya (the Benghazi region) and in the far-flung Sahara to the south.
  • Libya's fundamental problem is that rather than comprising a compact cluster of demography like the Nile Valley, it is but a vague geographical expression -- a monumentally vast desert and coastal region between historic Egypt and Greater Carthage (Tunisia).
  • Because Morocco, Tunisia and Egypt are geographically associated with specific knots of civilization going back to antiquity, they did not require suffocating forms of tyranny to hold them together like Libya, and to a lesser extent like Algeria, which for decades during the height of the Cold War had a radical socialist regime. For Libya, Moammar Gadhafi's regime was, in fact, anarchy masquerading as tyranny.
  • ...17 more annotations...
  • Therefore, it should surprise no one that the toppling of Gadhafi brought about the veritable collapse of the state. Libyan authorities do not govern so much as negotiate the terms of geographic control.
  • Modern states have borders; weak and failed states have frontiers.
  • The stability of regimes in places like Mauritania and Niger are somewhat more in doubt than before Gadhafi's collapse. Libya, for that matter, is now an ungovernable space in significant parts of the country where al Qaeda can very possibly find refuge. The killing of the American ambassador in Benghazi was indicative of the terrors that a chaotic, post-Gadhafi Libya can offer up.
  • It would seem from this accounting that the Obama administration's decision to militarily intervene in Libya (along with its NATO allies) was a blunder of the first magnitude.
  • A post-Gadhafi world now clearly presents the CIA with greater security challenges than it had before.
  • But the political reckoning for the Obama administration is not that simple.
  • Those reportedly in the forefront of arguing for intervention on such grounds were then-U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Susan Rice and National Security official Samantha Power.
  • The three women had good arguments: Were Gadhafi to have massacred large numbers of civilians with U. S. warships hovering just offshore, it would have been a demonstration of American fecklessness comparable to that of European (and particularly Dutch) fecklessness when Serb troops massacred large numbers of civilians in 1995 in Srebrenica under the thumb of U.N. peacekeepers.
  • The loss of prestige the United States might have suffered throughout the Arab world as a result could have been substantial.
  • More to the point, because we still do not know all the intelligence the administration had available at the time regarding Gadhafi's intentions in Benghazi, to condemn administration officials outright is too easy a judgment at this date.
  • But there is a conundrum here that those who favored intervention -- in Libya as well as elsewhere -- do not own up to. That is, short of deploying large numbers of ground troops, the ability of the U.S. government to rebuild weakened or collapsed states is severely limited.
  • Even the presence of more than 100,000 American ground troops was insufficient to make Iraq an adequately effective democracy, so how can one argue that a band of civilian experts, plus small numbers of special operations forces, could have accomplished more in Libya?
  • Gadhafi's regime had virtually eliminated civil society in a country that was barely a country -- and you say that the United States had it in its power to make it all whole, or partly whole, again?
  • Toppling an evil regime or stopping a war is a profoundly moral act.
  • But taking moral responsibility for what happens next in a country is the hard part.
  • because Washington tends to overestimate its own significance in terms of its ability to alter distant societies, the following pattern will continue to emerge: a terrible war resulting in calls for humanitarian intervention, an intervention in some cases, always followed by a blame game inside the Washington Beltway after the country has slipped back into tyranny or anarchy.
  • Meanwhile, here is a probability: Libya's relatively short history as a strong state is over. It will go on and on as a dangerous and weakly governed area between Tunisia and Egypt. Its considerable oil resources can internally generate revenue for armed groups and politicians both. Thus, Libya will become a metaphor for much of North Africa and the Sahara, places where frontiers are more common than borders. 
  • anonymous on 03 Apr 13
     
    "In the starkest terms, a state is defined by a bureaucratic hierarchy that monopolizes the use of force over a specific geography. Ideally, nobody need fear the authorities except those who break the law. And because the authorities monopolize violence, nobody need fear his fellow man. Of course, tyrannical states induce general fear among much of the population. And weak states have a difficult time monopolizing the use of force -- the reason they are weak in the first place. By these standards, many states in the world are weak. And Libya has gone from being a tyrannical state to being barely a state at all."
anonymous

Escalating Tensions on the Korean Peninsula (Agenda) - 0 views

www.stratfor.com/...nsions-korean-peninsula-agenda

shared by anonymous on 05 Apr 13 - Cached
  • It has now got to the point where you have a former CIA director, Michael Hayden, saying the possibility of North Korea funding a nuclear attack is somewhere between extremely remote and zero.
  • Well I think one in looking at his statements you have to look at the difference between nuclear and conventional warfare. The North Koreans have developed a nuclear device that they are able test underground. It's highly unlikely that the North Koreans have developed a deliverable nuclear weapon. And therefore, North Korea striking with a nuclear weapon at South Korea and particularly the ability of the North Koreans to strike at Japan or the United States is extremely remote.
  • At the same time, North Korea does have a very large conventional force. That conventional force is forward deployed, and the North Koreans and the South Koreans are exchanging certain types of rhetoric; they're both adjusting their rules of engagement or are at least claiming to be adjusting those.
  • ...13 more annotations...
  • Well the United States and the Chinese are going to have some meetings coming up in the not too distant future. Certainly, North Korea's going to be in discussion during those. The United States, however, has really tried to stick to its policy of ignoring the North Koreans to death.
  • in some sense the impression and the face that the U.S. is putting on this is that they're not willing to enter any form of negotiation at this time with the North Koreans until after the North Koreans reduce tension -- so not enter talks to bring tensions down but to wait until tensions come down to enter talks.
  • right now, the U.S. and the Chinese are on a very different page about what to do about this crisis.
  • In fact, it has taken most of the world attention off of what had been focused on what was perceived as Chinese maritime aggression in the region and it shifted it all to North Korea.
  • There really is no pre-emptive military action the South Koreans could take that doesn't risk triggering off a complete war.
  • The problem is that what the North Koreans have that threatens South Korea is not necessarily the nuclear program. It's not even really even the missile program. It's the frontline artillery. And there's no way to take out, to attack, to destroy that frontline artillery without basically triggering the response from North Korea to start shelling the greater Seoul-Incheon area.
  • The North Koreans right now, everybody's interpretation -- at least from the government level in looking at the North Koreans -- is that the North Koreans are not intent on actually triggering a war, that North Korea is just as concerned as everybody else about a war and perhaps even more because although the South Korean economy may be devastated in the short term, the likelihood of the North Korean regime being able to continue in the long term is very, very low.
  • So they will lose a war, effectively.
  • Rodger a few days ago I happened to be talking to Alexander Zhebin, a North Korean expert from the Academy of Sciences in Moscow. He was once the Tass correspondent in Pyongyang, and he argued that the issue for Kim Yong Un was getting a guarantee that his regime would survive, and that once he got that, progress could be made. Do you see any truth in this?
  • I think there is actually some truth in that. The North Koreans…their entire policy that they've been pursuing is a policy of securing and strengthening the Kim regime and securing the elite; it's maintaining control within North Korea.
  • And their pattern of raising tensions and backing down and then they have to raise tensions higher the next time before they back down, has really been going on for about 20 years.
  • They have lived since the end of the Korean War under how they perceive under the guns of the Untied States -- that they are under constant threat from the much larger United States. And whether the U.S. really has an interest in going after North Korea or not doesn't matter to the North Koreans.
  • From the North Korean point of view, Kaesong is probably economically more important for them than it is for South Korea, although there are a lot of small South Korean companies operating there that could be seriously damaged if the facilities close. But for the South Koreans, it is much more psychologically important because it really is the centerpiece of South Korean policy toward North Korea and it's that tiny piece that keeps a connection between the two. And from the South Korean perspective, as long as Kaesong is open, they see it as a signal from the North that they're really not going back to confrontation.
  • anonymous on 05 Apr 13
     
    "While President Xi Jinping gives the keynote speech at this weekend's Boao Forum on the Chinese island of Hainan, attended also by business icons like Bill Gates and George Soros, one friend of China will not be there -- North Korea's Kim Jong Un, now pondering his next move in the escalating threats uttered from Pyongyang."
anonymous

Jaron Lanier's Ignorance Of History, Basic Economics And Efficiency Is Getting Ridiculous - 1 views

www.techdirt.com/...cy-is-getting-ridiculous.shtml

shared by anonymous on 29 May 13 - Cached
  • The Kodak/Instagram comparison comes up over and over again, and it's moronic. It makes no sense. To demonstrate, let's take something else that's old and something else that's modern that sorta-kinda seems similar, and compare the two: Very, very, very few people make money "auctioning" goods via Christie's. Yet, a few years ago, eBay noted that 724,000 Americans made their primary or secondary incomes from eBay sales, with another 1.5 million supplementing their income. In the simplistic world of Jaron Lanier, this should be proof that eBay is good, and Christie's is bad, right? But, of course that's silly.
  • The fact that Instagram only employed a few people and Kodak employed a lot says nothing about the impact of technology on modern society or the economic status of the middle class.
  • First off, it didn't involve toxic chemicals that create massive amounts of waste and pollution. Second, because people don't have to buy expensive rolls of film to take pictures any more, they get to save money and put it to better use. Third, because we no longer have to worry about the expense of each photo, people are free to take many more photos and capture more memories and generally enjoy photography more. Fourth, because instagram makes the sharing of photos much easier, it enables much greater communication among family and friends, building stronger community bonds. I mean, you could go on and on and on.
  • ...10 more annotations...
  • “At the height of its power, agriculture employed 90 percent of the population and produced output worth vastly more than half of U.S. GDP. It even invented countless plant hybrids and animal breeds. But today nearly all farms of the past have gone bankrupt (or, seeing the economic writing on the wall, were transformed to other uses). Agriculture today employs only about one percent of the workforce. Where did all those jobs disappear? And what happened to the wealth that all those good agricultural jobs created?”
  • Economic efficiency often shifts jobs around, but creates a much larger pie, which leads to new job creation. We can reasonably question whether the there are people who get left behind, or what kinds of skills are favored as industries become obsolete, but the idea that it destroys a middle class is just silly.
  • We kind of made a bargain, a social contract, in the 20th century that even if jobs were pleasant people could still get paid for them. Because otherwise we would have had a massive unemployment. And so to my mind, the right question to ask is, why are we abandoning that bargain that worked so well? When did "we" make this "bargain" and, honestly, what is he talking about? There was no such bargain made. Jobs have nothing to do with whether they are "pleasant." And we didn't create jobs to avoid unemployment. We created jobs because there was demand for work, meaning there was demand for products and services, just as there still is today.
  • New jobs were created because of demand, and because new technologies create efficiencies which create and enable new jobs. It has nothing to do with "decisions" being made or "social contracts." It has to do with efficiency and new things being enabled through innovation.
  • This is the broken window fallacy exploded exponentially for a digital era. It seems to assume that the only "payment" is monetary. That is, if you do something for free online -- share a video or a photo, like a link, listen to a song -- that you're somehow getting screwed because some company gets that info and you're not getting paid.
  • But that's ridiculous. The people are getting "paid" in the form of the benefit they get: free hosting and software for hosting/streaming videos and pictures, free ability to communicate easily with friends, access to music, etc. The list goes on and on, but Lanier seems to not understand the idea that there are non-monetary benefits, which is why various online services which he seems to hate are so popular.
    • anonymous
      anonymous on 29 May 13
       
      Whuffie!
  • A token few will find success on Kickstarter or YouTube, while overall wealth is ever more concentrated and social mobility rots. Social media sharers can make all the noise they want, but they forfeit the real wealth and clout needed to be politically powerful. Real wealth and clout instead concentrate ever more on the shrinking island occupied by elites who run the most powerful computers.
  • This is bullshit, plain and simple. Under the "old" system, you had a smaller "token few" who found success via getting a major label contract or having a publisher accept them into the club of published authors.
  • It's as if Lanier is talking about a mythical past that never existed to make some point about the future. But all of the evidence suggests that more people are now able to make use of these tools to create new incomes and new opportunities to make money, while in the past you had to wait for some gatekeeper.
  • Lanier, a beneficiary of the old gatekeepers, may like the old system, but he's confused about history, facts, reality and economics in making this ridiculous argument -- and it's a shame that those interviewing him or publishing his ridiculously misinformed screeds don't seem to ever challenge him on his claims.
    • anonymous
      anonymous on 29 May 13
       
      Given the Gladwellian attention he's getting, this would seem prudent. If there *is* something of value in there, let's use that wacky, radical tool: science - to figure it out. :)
  • anonymous on 29 May 13
     
    "So... we'd already taken a stab at debunking Jaron Lanier's "gobbledygook economics" a few weeks back when it started appearing, but since then there's been more Lanier everywhere (obviously, in coordination with his book release), and each time it seems more ridiculous than the last. Each time, the focus is on the following economically ridiculous concepts: (1) there should be micropayments for anyone doing anything free online because someone benefits somewhere (2) modern efficiency via technology has destroyed the middle class. Both of these claims make no sense at all. "
anonymous

The question libertarians just can't answer - 1 views

www.salon.com/..._libertarians_just_cant_answer

shared by anonymous on 10 Jun 13 - Cached
  • There are 193 sovereign state members of the United Nations—195, if you count the Vatican and Palestine, which have been granted observer status by the world organization. If libertarianism was a good idea, wouldn’t at least one country have tried it? Wouldn’t there be at least one country, out of nearly two hundred, with minimal government, free trade, open borders, decriminalized drugs, no welfare state and no public education system?
  • Libertarian theorists have the luxury of mixing and matching policies to create an imaginary utopia. A real country must function simultaneously in different realms—defense and the economy, law enforcement and some kind of system of support for the poor. Being able to point to one truly libertarian country would provide at least some evidence that libertarianism can work in the real world.
  • Some political philosophies pass this test. For much of the global center-left, the ideal for several generations has been Nordic social democracy—what the late liberal economist Robert Heilbroner described as “a slightly idealized Sweden.”
  • ...13 more annotations...
  • Libertarians have often proclaimed that the economic failure of Marxism-Leninism discredits not only all forms of socialism but also moderate social-democratic liberalism.
  • If socialism is discredited by the failure of communist regimes in the real world, why isn’t libertarianism discredited by the absence of any libertarian regimes in the real world?
  • Communism was tried and failed. Libertarianism has never even been tried on the scale of a modern nation-state, even a small one, anywhere in the world.
  • But none of these countries, including the U.S., is anywhere near a libertarian paradise.
  • Even worse, the economic-freedom country rankings are biased toward city-states and small countries.
  • With the exception of Switzerland, four out of the top five were small British overseas colonies which played interstitial roles in the larger British empire.
  • Even though they are formally sovereign today, these places remain fragments of larger defense systems and larger markets. They are able to engage in free riding on the provision of public goods, like security and huge consumer populations, by other, bigger states.
  • These countries play specialized roles in much larger regional and global markets, rather as cities or regions do in a large nation-state like the U.S. Hong Kong and Singapore remain essentially entrepots for international trade.
  • Switzerland is an international banking and tax haven. What works for them would not work for a giant nation-state like the U.S.
  • The Heritage Foundation is free to define economic freedom however it likes, by its own formula weighting government size, freedom of trade, absence of regulation and so on. What about factors other than economic freedom that shape the quality of life of citizens?
  • According to the CIA World Fact book, the U.S. spends more than Mauritius—5.4 percent of GDP in 2009 compared to only 3.7 percent in Mauritius in 2010.
  • In economically-more-free Mauritius there are about 11 deaths per 1,000 live births—compared to 5.9 in the economically-less-free U.S.
  • Libertarians seem to have persuaded themselves that there is no significant trade-off between less government and more national insecurity, more crime, more illiteracy and more infant and maternal mortality, among other things.
  • anonymous on 10 Jun 13
     
    A most cogent argument. I don't think it's the author's job to balance itself out (as was suggested in G+). Against what, exactly? The piece had nothing to do with the two-party system. I completely agree that our two party system is a joke, but I fail to see how inserting an additional joke adds anything. The LP serves a vote-getting purpose for the GOP. That is all. Once the GOP gets enough votes, they reserve the right to kick the LP ideas/candidates to the curb - and often do. That's been the cycle for decades. Years back, it made me angry. I'm pretty ambivalent now. Circle of political life. The official LP positions on a whole host of issues is beyond unpalatable even for our heavily right-leaning electorate. Abolishing the WoD is a great policy idea, but it needs to be accompanied by more great ideas before Americans do more than pay lip service and pretend to Go Galt. Oh, and they have to rip out their Objectivist-center and hurl it into the sun.
anonymous

Israelis, Saudis and the Iranian Agreement - 0 views

www.stratfor.com/...s-saudis-and-iranian-agreement

shared by anonymous on 26 Nov 13 - No Cached
  • The mere fact that the U.S. secretary of state would meet openly with the Iranian foreign minister would have been difficult to imagine a few months ago, and unthinkable at the beginning of the Islamic republic. 
  • The U.S. goal is to eliminate Iran's nuclear weapons before they are built, without the United States having to take military action to eliminate them.
  • The Iranians' primary goal is regime preservation.
  • ...28 more annotations...
  • Western sanctions have dramatically increased the economic pressure on Iran and have affected a wide swath of the Iranian public.
  • The election of President Hassan Rouhani to replace Mahmoud Ahmadinejad after the latter's two terms was a sign of unhappiness.
  • The logic here suggests a process leading to the elimination of all sanctions in exchange for the supervision of Iran's nuclear activities to prevent it from developing a weapon. Unless this is an Iranian trick to somehow buy time to complete a weapon and test it, I would think that the deal could be done in six months.
  • An Iranian ploy to create cover for building a weapon would also demand a reliable missile and a launch pad invisible to surveillance satellites and the CIA, National Security Agency, Mossad, MI6 and other intelligence agencies. The Iranians would likely fail at this, triggering airstrikes however risky they might be and putting Iran back where it started economically. While this is a possibility, the scenario is not likely when analyzed closely.
  • There is a bit of irony in Israel and Saudi Arabia being allied on this issue, but only on the surface. Both have been intense enemies of Iran, and close allies of the United States; each sees this act as a betrayal of its relationship with Washington.
  • In a way, this marks a deeper shift in relations with Saudi Arabia than with Israel.
  • It was a massive producer of oil. It was also the protector of Mecca and Medina, two Muslim holy cities, giving the Saudis an added influence in the Islamic world on top of their extraordinary wealth. 
  • It was in British and American interests to protect Saudi Arabia from its enemies, most of which were part of the Muslim world.
  • Absent the United States in the Persian Gulf, Iran would have been the most powerful regional military power.
  • The problem from the Saudi point of view is that while there was a wide ideological gulf between the United States and Iran, there was little in the way of substantial issues separating Washington from Tehran.
  • The United States did not want Iran to develop nuclear weapons. The Iranians didn't want the United States hindering Iran's economic development. The fact was that getting a nuclear weapon was not a fundamental Iranian interest, and crippling Iran's economy was not a fundamental interest to the United States absent an Iranian nuclear program.
  • The Iranians want investment in their oil sector and other parts of their economy. American oil companies would love to invest in Iran, as would other U.S. businesses.
  • There are other significant political issues that can't be publicly addressed. The United States wants Iran to temper its support for Hezbollah's militancy, and guarantee it will not support terrorism. The Iranians want guarantees that Iraq will not develop an anti-Iranian government, and that the United States will work to prevent this.
  • From the Saudi point of view, Iranian demands regarding Iraq will be of greatest concern.
  • From the Israeli point of view, there are two threats from Iran. One is the nuclear program.
  • The other is Iranian support not only for Hezbollah but also for Hamas and other groups in the region.
  • But in the end, this is not the problem that the Saudis and Israelis have. Their problem is that both depend on the United States for their national security. Neither country can permanently exist in a region filled with dangers without the United States as a guarantor.
  • Israel needs access to American military equipment that it can't build itself, like fighter aircraft. Saudi Arabia needs to have American troops available as the ultimate guarantor of their security, as they were in 1990.
  • What frightens them the most about this agreement is that fact. If the foundation of their national security is the American commitment to them, then the inability to influence Washington is a threat to their national security.
  • The fact is that neither the Saudis nor the Israelis have a potential patron other than the United States.
  • The United States is not abandoning either Israel or Saudi Arabia. A regional policy based solely on the Iranians would be irrational. What the United States wants to do is retain its relationship with Israel and Saudi Arabia, but on modified terms.
  • The modification is that U.S. support will come in the context of a balance of power, particularly between Iran and Saudi Arabia. While the United States is prepared to support the Saudis in that context, it will not simply support them absolutely.
  • The Saudis and Israelis will have to live with things that they have not had to live with before -- namely, an American concern for a reasonably strong and stable Iran regardless of its ideology.
  • The American strategy is built on experience in Iraq and Afghanistan. Washington has learned that it has interests in the region, but that the direct use of American force cannot achieve those goals, partly because imposing solutions takes more force than the United States has and partly because the more force it uses, the more resistance it generates. Therefore, the United States needs a means of minimizing its interests, and pursuing those it has without direct force.
  • Saudi Arabia is not abandoned, but nor is it the sole interest of the United States.
  • In the same sense, the United States is committed to the survival of Israel.
  • If Iranian nuclear weapons are prevented, the United States has fulfilled that commitment, since there are no current threats that could conceivably threaten Israeli survival. Israel's other interests, such as building settlements in the West Bank, do not require American support.
  • With this opening to Iran, the United States will no longer be bound by its Israeli and Saudi relationships. They will not be abandoned, but the United States has broader interests than those relationships, and at the same time few interests that rise to the level of prompting it to directly involve U.S. troops.
  • anonymous on 26 Nov 13
     
    "A deal between Iran and the P-5+1 (the five permanent members of the U.N. Security Council plus Germany) was reached Saturday night. The Iranians agreed to certain limitations on their nuclear program while the P-5+1 agreed to remove certain economic sanctions. The next negotiation, scheduled for six months from now depending on both sides' adherence to the current agreement, will seek a more permanent resolution. The key players in this were the United States and Iran. "
anonymous

Can Putin Survive? - 0 views

www.stratfor.com/...can-putin-survive

shared by anonymous on 22 Jul 14 - Cached
  • Part of the reason Putin had replaced Boris Yeltsin in 2000 was Yeltsin's performance during the Kosovo war.
  • Putin also replaced Yeltsin because of the disastrous state of the Russian economy.
  • Under Yeltsin, however, Russia had become even poorer and was now held in contempt in international affairs.
  • ...18 more annotations...
  • The breaking point came in Ukraine during the Orange Revolution of 2004.
  • At that time, Putin accused the CIA and other Western intelligence agencies of having organized the demonstrations. Fairly publicly, this was the point when Putin became convinced that the West intended to destroy the Russian Federation, sending it the way of the Soviet Union.
  • The Russians worked from 2004 to 2010 to undo the Orange Revolution.
  • Russia's invasion of Georgia had more to do with Ukraine than it had to do with the Caucasus.
  • The invasion of Georgia was designed to do two things. The first was to show the region that the Russian military, which had been in shambles in 2000, was able to act decisively in 2008. The second was to demonstrate to the region, and particularly to Kiev, that American guarantees, explicit or implicit, had no value.
  • Washington wanted to restore the relationship in place during what Putin regarded as the "bad old days." He naturally had no interest in such a restart.
  • Instead, he saw the United States as having adopted a defensive posture, and he intended to exploit his advantage. 
  • If no Ukrainian uprising occurred, Putin's strategy was to allow the government in Kiev to unravel of its own accord and to split the United States from Europe by exploiting Russia's strong trade and energy ties with the Continent.
  • And this is where the crash of the Malaysia Airlines jet is crucial.
  • If it turns out -- as appears to be the case -- that Russia supplied air defense systems to the separatists and sent crews to man them (since operating those systems requires extensive training), Russia could be held responsible for shooting down the plane.
  • Putin must consider the fate of his predecessors.
  • Given current pressures, we would guess the Russian economy will slide into recession sometime in 2014. The debt levels of regional governments have doubled in the past four years, and several regions are close to bankruptcy. Moreover, some metals and mining firms are facing bankruptcy. The Ukrainian crisis has made things worse. Capital flight from Russia in the first six months stood at $76 billion, compared to $63 billion for all of 2013. Foreign direct investment fell 50 percent in the first half of 2014 compared to the same period in 2013. And all this happened in spite of oil prices remaining higher than $100 per barrel.
  • Putin has restored Soviet elements to the structure of the government, even using the term "Politburo" for his inner Cabinets.
  • The Politburo model is designed for a leader to build coalitions among factions.
  • Ultimately, politicians who miscalculate and mismanage tend not to survive. Putin miscalculated in Ukraine, failing to anticipate the fall of an ally, failing to respond effectively and then stumbling badly in trying to recoup. His management of the economy has not been exemplary of late either, to say the least. He has colleagues who believe they could do a better job, and now there are important people in Europe who would be glad to see him go. He must reverse this tide rapidly, or he may be replaced.
  • Putin is far from finished. But he has governed for 14 years counting the time Dmitri Medvedev was officially in charge, and that is a long time.
  • The wild card in this situation is that if Putin finds himself in serious political trouble, he might become more rather than less aggressive.
  • Those who think that Putin is both the most repressive and aggressive Russian leader imaginable should bear in mind that this is far from the case. Lenin, for example, was fearsome. But Stalin was much worse. There may similarly come a time when the world looks at the Putin era as a time of liberality.
  • anonymous on 22 Jul 14
     
    "There is a general view that Vladimir Putin governs the Russian Federation as a dictator, that he has defeated and intimidated his opponents and that he has marshaled a powerful threat to surrounding countries. This is a reasonable view, but perhaps it should be re-evaluated in the context of recent events. "
anonymous

Russian Spies and Strategic Intelligence - 0 views

www.stratfor.com/...ies_and_strategic_intelligence

geopolitics

shared by anonymous on 13 Jul 10 - Cached
  • The way the media has reported on the issue falls into three groups: That the Cold War is back, That, given that the Cold War is over, the point of such outmoded intelligence operations is questionable, And that the Russian spy ring was spending its time aimlessly nosing around in think tanks and open meetings in an archaic and incompetent effort.
  • First, it needs to know what other nations are capable of doing.
  • Second, the nation needs to know what other nations intend to do.
  • ...25 more annotations...
  • The more powerful a nation is, the more important it is to understand what it is doing.
  • Knowing what the United States will do, and shifting policy based on that, can save countries from difficulties and even disaster.
  • What they excelled at, however, was placing undetectable operatives in key positions. Soviet talent scouts would range around left-wing meetings to discover potential recruits. These would be young people with impeccable backgrounds and only limited contact with the left. They would be recruited based on ideology, and less often via money, sex or blackmail. They would never again be in contact with communists or fellow travelers.
  • Recruiting people who were not yet agents, creating psychological and material bonds over long years of management and allowing them to mature into senior intelligence or ministry officials allowed ample time for testing loyalty and positioning. The Soviets not only got more reliable information this way but also the ability to influence the other country’s decision-making.
  • There were four phases: Identifying likely candidates, Evaluating and recruiting them, Placing them and managing their rise in the organization, And exploiting them.
  • It is difficult to know what the Russian team was up to in the United States from news reports, but there are two things we know about the Russians: They are not stupid, and they are extremely patient.
  • If we were to guess — and we are guessing — this was a team of talent scouts.
  • One of the Russian operatives, Don Heathfield, once approached a STRATFOR employee in a series of five meetings.
  • We would guess that Anna Chapman was brought in as part of the recruitment phase of talent scouting.
  • Each of the phases of the operatives’ tasks required a tremendous amount of time, patience and, above all, cover. The operatives had to blend in (in this case, they didn’t do so well enough).
  • Were the Americans to try the same thing, they would have to convince people to spend years learning Russian to near-native perfection and then to spend 20-30 years of their lives in Russia. Some would be willing to do so, but not nearly as many as there are Russians prepared to spend that amount of time in the United States or Western Europe.
  • The United States has substituted technical intelligence for this process. Thus, the most important U.S. intelligence-collection agency is not the CIA; it is the National Security Agency (NSA).
  • In many ways, this provides better and faster intelligence than the placement of agents, except that this does not provide influence.
  • it assumes that what senior (and other) individuals say, write or even think reveals the most important things about the country in question.
  • The fall of the Shah of Iran and the collapse of the Soviet empire were events of towering importance for the United States.
  • Either of those scenarios would not have made any difference to how events played out. This is because, in the end, the respective senior leadership didn’t know how events were going to play out. Partly this is because they were in denial, but mostly this is because they didn’t have the facts and they didn’t interpret the facts they did have properly. At these critical turning points in history, the most thorough penetration using either American or Russian techniques would have failed to provide warning of the change ahead.
  • The people being spied on and penetrated simply didn’t understand their own capabilities — i.e., the reality on the ground in their respective countries — and therefore their intentions about what to do were irrelevant and actually misleading.
  • if we regard anticipating systemic changes as one of the most important categories of intelligence, then these are cases where the targets of intelligence may well know the least and know it last.
  • We started with three classes of intelligence: capabilities, intentions and what will actually happen.
  • The first is an objective measure that can sometimes be seen directly but more frequently is obtained through data held by someone in the target country. The most important issue is not what this data says but how accurate it is.
  • For example, George W. Bush did not intend to get bogged down in a guerrilla war in Iraq. What he intended and what happened were two different things because his view of American and Iraqi capabilities were not tied to reality.
  • But in the end, the most important question to ask is whether the most highly placed source has any clue as to what is going to happen.
  • Knowledge of what is being thought is essential. But gaming out how the objective and impersonal forces will interact and play out it is the most important thing of all.
  • The events of the past few weeks show intelligence doing the necessary work of recruiting and rescuing agents. The measure of all of this activity is not whether one has penetrated the other side, but in the end, whether your intelligence organization knew what was going to happen and told you regardless of what well-placed sources believed. Sometimes sources are indispensable. Sometimes they are misleading. And sometimes they are the way an intelligence organization justifies being wrong.
    • anonymous
      anonymous on 13 Jul 10
       
      This feels like that old saying, amateurs study tactics but experts study logistics. Perhaps that's the angle on this spying stuff that we haven't taken because we subconsciously imagine the crap of popular culture where knowledge should be.
    • anonymous
      anonymous on 13 Jul 10
       
      It certainly makes my thoughts here (http://longgame.org/2010/07/spies-like-them/) feel pretty damned quaint.
  • There appeared to be no goal of recruitment; rather, the Russian operative tried to get the STRATFOR employee to try out software he said his company had developed. We suspect that had this been done, our servers would be outputting to Moscow. We did not know at the time who he was.
  • anonymous on 13 Jul 10
     
    Some amount of spying is the cost of doing business for any power. By George Friedman at StratFor on July 13, 2010.
anonymous

Right Mind - 0 views

www.tnr.com/...right-mind

culture politics partisan criticalthinking

shared by anonymous on 18 Mar 10 - Cached
  • Fox News is awash in experts like Ablow: retired judges, generals, or CIA agents willing to serve as well-credentialed sidekicks for the network’s roster of demagogues. But what makes Ablow so valuable to the network are those two little letters after his name, M.D. He can stamp his medical imprimatur--he’s “America’s psychiatrist,” according to himself--on just about any right-wing political narrative.
  • “If I seem to say things with certainty, it comes from being able to register underlying truths that I feel very clearly about,” he says. “I don’t accept that these ideas have to be relegated to analysts’ couches or therapists’ basement offices. That’s the stuff of stigma.”
  • “I learned a long time ago that to talk about things four years from now was folly.” He’s right, of course, but, when the time comes to make up his mind, Ablow probably won’t keep his audience waiting long for an answer.
  • ...1 more annotation...
  • Glenn Beck’s show, despite its apocalyptic trappings, is as touchy-feely a show as there is. Nobody on cable news cries as much, emotes as extravagantly, or leans as heavily on the vocabulary of personal betterment. In fact, it’s hard to imagine another talk-show host more in need of a resident mental-health professional.
  • anonymous on 18 Mar 10
     
    "Meet Glenn Beck's shrink" and groan beneath your breath...
anonymous

Right Mind - 0 views

www.tnr.com/...right-mind

criticalthinking culture partisan politics

shared by anonymous on 18 Mar 10 - Cached
  • Fox News is awash in experts like Ablow: retired judges, generals, or CIA agents willing to serve as well-credentialed sidekicks for the network’s roster of demagogues. But what makes Ablow so valuable to the network are those two little letters after his name, M.D. He can stamp his medical imprimatur--he’s “America’s psychiatrist,” according to himself--on just about any right-wing political narrative.
  • anonymous on 18 Mar 10
     
    "Meet Glenn Beck's shrink" and groan beneath your breath...
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