Chuck Spinney

This email builds on the information in my 8 May email entitled, The Real Scare in Syria Is Not Chemical Weapons.”  Attached below is a post from Joshua Landis’s Syria Comment blog.  Landis is a professor at the University of Oklahoma and a specialist on Syria — his blog often provides useful, insightful information.

Particularly important, IMO, are Landis’ comments relating the conflict in this region to its spillover effects into Turkey (for more background see also: “Will Syria’s Revolt Disrupt the Turkish Borderlands?.”

Spillover is a very serious issue, because the Turkish province just north of the map below, Hatay Province, used to be part of Syria — it was in effect ceded to Turkey by France (and the UK and the League of Nation) in the late 1939s as part of a subtle deal to elicit Turkey’s neutral if they became involved in a war with Germany (WWII) — a promise Turkey kept.

The map herewith shows where Hatay is located:

Landis’ comments, among other things, highlights some of the forces sucking Turkey may  further into the Syrian quagmire.  Note text marked in red below are my comments.  The first half of this essay is a summary of Landis’ personal views on the situation in Levantine Syria, the second half is a series of essays outlining reasons why the US should not intervene militarily.

Chuck Spinney

Do the Massacres in Bayda and Banyas Portend Ethnic Cleansing to Create an Alawite State?

by Joshua Landis, Syria Comment, May 13, 2013

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Gordon Duff

The Strange Case of Phil Schneider

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

Forgotten “Accidented” UFO WhistleBlower Touches Too Close

By Gordon Duff, Senior Editor

EXTRACT:

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

Article and Seven YouTube Videos

Paul Craig Roberts

Does The West Have A Future?

Living in America is becoming very difficult for anyone with a moral conscience, a sense of justice, or a lick of intelligence. Consider:

We have had a second fake underwear bomb plot, a much more fantastic one than the first hoax. The second underwear bomber was a CIA operative or informant allegedly recruited by al-Qaeda, an organization that US authorities have recently claimed to be defeated, in disarray, and no longer significant.

This defeated and insignificant organization, which lacks any science and technology labs, has invented an “invisible bomb” that is not detected by the porno-scanners. A “senior law enforcement source” told the New York Times that “the scary part” is that “if they buil[t] one, they probably built more.”

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Berto Jongman

Economic Consequences of War

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

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

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

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

Download the report here

Key findings

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

Report highlights

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

• Public debt and levels of taxation increased during most conflicts

• Consumption as a percent of GDP decreased during most conflicts

• Investment as a percent of GDP decreased during most conflicts

• Inflation increased during or as a direct consequence of these conflicts

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

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

See Also:

Journal: Politics & Intelligence–Partners Only When Integrity is Central to Both

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

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

Chuck Spinney

The Koch Brothers, The Cato Institute, And Why Nations Fail

John Robb

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

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

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

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

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

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David Swanson

Top 10 Genius Reasons to Keep Troops in Afghanistan

David Swanson

WarIsACrime.org, 8 March 2012

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

10. Terror hasn’t conceded defeat yet.

Syria: Special comment. Readers are rightly perplexed about conditions in Syria. Syrian press restrictions inhibit any neutral or balanced coverage. Everything reported from opposition sources and activists is biased and some reports of massacres include manufactured images, according to eyewitnesses.

International news descriptions of a worsening crisis receive no offsetting coverage of testimony from non-Sunni and non-opposition sources that little is occurring. The massacres are not taking place, occurring to sources that receive messages from Orthodox Christians living in Homs, for example. Life goes on in all of the towns and ports.

Skirmishes at checkpoints are the most common form of clash. That means four or five people fire a few rounds at four or five soldiers or policemen. Defectors are Sunni conscripts. The Syrian Army is about 60% conscript. Desertion is common in conscript armies. Defectors from the professional, full-time, non-conscript core of the force, most of whom are Alawites, have not been reported.

The point is that western media present one side of the struggle — that of the exiled Sunni politicians and activists with cell phones. Clips from social networking media are heavily one-sided and some are not authentic.

Limited communications from people caught in the middle, non-Muslims, suggest there is a lot less fighting and fewer deaths. Reports of carnage and massacres of hundreds do not seem to be accurate, except in opposition propaganda media.

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Truth, lies and Afghanistan

How military leaders have let us down

LT. COL. DANIEL L. DAVIS

Armed Forces Journal,

I spent last year in Afghanistan, visiting and talking with U.S. troops and their Afghan partners. My duties with the Army’s Rapid Equipping Force took me into every significant area where our soldiers engage the enemy. Over the course of 12 months, I covered more than 9,000 miles and talked, traveled and patrolled with troops in Kandahar, Kunar, Ghazni, Khost, Paktika, Kunduz, Balkh, Nangarhar and other provinces.

What I saw bore no resemblance to rosy official statements by U.S. military leaders about conditions on the ground.

. . . . . . . .

Tell The Truth

When it comes to deciding what matters are worth plunging our nation into war and which are not, our senior leaders owe it to the nation and to the uniformed members to be candid — graphically, if necessary — in telling them what’s at stake and how expensive potential success is likely to be. U.S. citizens and their elected representatives can decide if the risk to blood and treasure is worth it.

Likewise when having to decide whether to continue a war, alter its aims or to close off a campaign that cannot be won at an acceptable price, our senior leaders have an obligation to tell Congress and American people the unvarnished truth and let the people decide what course of action to choose. That is the very essence of civilian control of the military. The American people deserve better than what they’ve gotten from their senior uniformed leaders over the last number of years. Simply telling the truth would be a good start. AFJ

Read full article.

See Also:

Marcus Aurelius: Col Paul Yingling, Departing