Text Fwd: Obama's CIA pick has Afghan war bias

* Text fwd by Bruce Gagnon on May 5, 2011

http://www.ajc.com/opinion/obamas-cia-pick-has-935268.html
Obama’s CIA pick has Afghan war bias
By Ray McGovern
Atlanta Journal Constitution Op-Ed
May 5, 2011

President Barack Obama’s nomination of Gen. David Petraeus to be CIA director raises troubling questions for anyone familiar with the need for tell-it-like-it-is intelligence analysis.

Sadly, the selection of Petraeus suggests that the president places little value on getting the objective analysis that was originally the CIA’s raison d’etre — the kind that could (and often did) challenge more narrowly focused views of the Pentagon.

What could Obama have been thinking in giving the top CIA job to the general with the most incentive to gild the lily regarding “progress” made under his command?

Will Petraeus look kindly on discordant views regarding the wisdom and likely outcome of those wars? What is likely to happen to the careers of those CIA analysts who long since concluded that the troop “surges” pushed so publicly by Petraeus will merely squander the lives of American troops (not to mention billions of taxpayer dollars) and, ironically, make our country more vulnerable to attack from terrorists?

Petraeus already has a record of looking skeptically at CIA analysts. That is why he relegated them to straphanger status during the decision-making process in late 2009 on what to do about Afghanistan.

When Obama expressed doubts about the value of a major escalation in Afghanistan, Petraeus assured him that the sending of 33,000 additional troops would work. It won’t.

Before Obama acceded to the wishes of Petraeus and fellow generals in late 2009, CIA analysts weren’t even assigned to do the kind of National Intelligence Estimate, or NIE, which has almost always been de rigueur before key presidential decisions like a large-scale escalation of war.

To his credit, retired Air Force Lt. Gen. James Clapper, who became director of National Intelligence in August 2010, bucked that tide. He insisted that two NIEs be prepared last fall — one on Afghanistan and one on Pakistan.

The estimate on Afghanistan concluded that the U.S. could not prevail without a firm decision by Pakistan to prevent Taliban fighters from crossing the border into Afghanistan. The one on Pakistan said there was little chance that the Pakistanis would do this.

The sobering conclusions of those NIEs were supported by a treasure trove of 92,000 documents written mostly by U.S. forces in Afghanistan from 2004 to 2009 and released by WikiLeaks on July 25, 2010.

This more granular reporting from WikiLeaks laid bare the futility of the U.S.-led war in Afghanistan — particularly the forlorn hope that the Pakistanis will “change their strategic outlook” and help pull U.S. chestnuts out of the Afghan fire.

The most explosive revelations provided embarrassing detail on the double game being played by the Pakistani Directorate for Inter-Service Intelligence, or ISI. The German magazine Der Spiegel put it this way: “The documents clearly show that this Pakistani intelligence agency is the most important accomplice the Taliban has outside of Afghanistan.”

No one disputes the authenticity of the U.S. reports released via WikiLeaks. But there is zero indication that their publication, just eight months after Obama’s fateful decision in late 2009, might have spurred a reassessment.

With U.S. Special Forces kicking down Afghan doors at night, drones terrorizing alleged “militants,” and whole villages destroyed in order to “save” them from the Taliban, Petraeus’ approach is a truly strange way to go about winning hearts and minds. By naming him head of the CIA, Obama has made it immeasurably more difficult to change course.

- Ray McGovern, a CIA analyst for 27 years, works with Tell the Word, a publishing arm of the ecumenical Church of the Saviour in Washington.

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Text Fwd: A more militarized CIA for a more militarized America

* Text fwd by J.D. on April 28, 2011

http://www.salon.com/news/opinion/glenn_greenwald/2011/04/28/petraeus/index.html
A more militarized CIA for a more militarized America
By Glenn Greenwald

AP
Gen. David Petraeus

The first four Directors of the CIA (from 1947-1953) were military officers, but since then, there has been a tradition (generally though imperfectly observed) of keeping the agency under civilian rather than military leadership. That's why George Bush's 2006 nomination of Gen. Michael Hayden to the CIA provoked so many objections from Democrats (and even some Republicans).

The Hayden nomination triggered this comment from the current Democratic Chairwoman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, Dianne Feinstein: "You can't have the military control most of the major aspects of intelligence. The CIA is a civilian agency and is meant to be a civilian agency." The then-top Democratic member of the House Intelligence Committee, Jane Harman, said "she hears concerns from civilian CIA professionals about whether the Defense Department is taking over intelligence operations" and "shares those concerns." On Meet the Press, Nancy Pelosi cited tensions between the DoD and the CIA and said: "I don't see how you have a four-star general heading up the CIA." Then-Sen. Joe Biden worried that the CIA, with a General in charge, will "just be gobbled up by the Defense Department." Even the current GOP Chair of the House Intelligence Committee, Pete Hoekstra, voiced the same concern about Hayden: "We should not have a military person leading a civilian agency at this time."

Of course, like so many Democratic objections to Bush policies, that was then and this is now. Yesterday, President Obama announced -- to very little controversy -- that he was nominating Gen. David Petraeus to become the next CIA Director. The Petraeus nomination raises all the same concerns as the Hayden nomination did, but even more so: Hayden, after all, had spent his career in military intelligence and Washington bureaucratic circles and thus was a more natural fit for the agency; by contrast, Petraues is a pure military officer and, most of all, a war fighting commander with little background in intelligence. But in the world of the Obama administration, Petraeus' militarized, warrior orientation is considered an asset for running the CIA, not a liability.

That's because the CIA, under Obama, is more militarized than ever, as devoted to operationally fighting wars as anything else, including analyzing and gathering intelligence. This morning's Washington Post article on the Petraeus nomination -- headlined: "Petraeus would helm an increasingly militarized CIA" -- is unusual in presenting such a starkly forthright picture of how militarized the U.S. has become under the 2009 Nobel Peace Prize winner:


Gen. David H. Petraeus has served as commander in two wars launched by the United States after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. If confirmed as the next director of the Central Intelligence Agency, Petraeus would effectively take command of a third -- in Pakistan.

Petraeus's nomination comes at a time when the CIA functions, more than ever in its history, as an extension of the nation's lethal military force.

CIA teams operate alongside U.S. special operations forces in conflict zones from Afghanistan to Yemen. The agency has also built up a substantial paramilitary capability of its own. But perhaps most significantly, the agency is in the midst of what amounts to a sustained bombing campaign over Pakistan using unmanned Predator and Reaper drones.

Since Obama took office there have been at least 192 drone missile strikes, killing as many as 1,890 militants, suspected terrorists and civilians. Petraeus is seen as a staunch supporter of the drone campaign, even though it has so far failed to eliminate the al-Qaeda threat or turn the tide of the Afghan war. . . .

Petraeus has spent relatively little time in Washington over the past decade and doesn’t have as much experience with managing budgets or running Washington bureaucracies as CIA predecessors Leon E. Panetta and Michael V. Hayden. But Petraeus has quietly lobbied for the CIA post, drawn in part by the chance for a position that would keep him involved in the wars in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iraq and Yemen.

It's rare for American media outlets to list all of our "wars" this way, including the covert ones (and that list does not even include the newest one, in Libya, where drone attacks are playing an increasingly prominent role as well). But Barack Obama does indeed preside over numerous American wars in the Muslim world, including some that he started (Libya and Yemen) and others which he's escalated (Afghanistan and Pakistan). Because our wars are so often fought covertly, the CIA has simply become yet another arm of America's imperial war-fighting machine, thus making it the perfect fit for Bush and Obama's most cherished war-fighting General to lead (Petraeus will officially retire from the military to take the position, though that obviously does not change who he is, how he thinks, and what his loyalties are).

One reason why it's so valuable to keep the CIA under civilian control is because its independent intelligence analyst teams often serve as one of the very few capable bureaucratic checks against the Pentagon and its natural drive for war. That was certainly true during the Bush years when factions in the CIA rebelled against the dominant neocon Rumsfeld/Wolfowitz/Feith clique, but it's been true recently as well:


Others voiced concern that Petraeus is too wedded to the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq -- and the troop-heavy, counterinsurgency strategy he designed -- to deliver impartial assessments of those wars as head of the CIA.

Indeed, over the past year the CIA has generally presented a more pessimistic view of the war in Afghanistan than Petraeus has while he has pushed for an extended troop buildup.

That's why, noted The Post, there is "some grumbling among CIA veterans opposed to putting a career military officer in charge of an agency with a long tradition of civilian leadership." But if one thing is clear in Washington, it's that neither political party is willing or even able to stand up to the military establishment, and especially not a General as sanctified in Washington circles as Petraeus. It's thus unsurprising that "Petraeus seems unlikely to encounter significant opposition from Capitol Hill" and that, without promising to vote for his confirmation, Sen. Feinstein -- who raised such a ruckus over the appointment of Hayden -- yesterday "signaled support for Petraeus."

The nomination of Petraeus doesn't change much; it merely reflects how Washington is run. That George Bush's favorite war-commanding General -- who advocated for and oversaw the Surge in Iraq -- is also Barack Obama's favorite war-commanding General, and that Obama is now appointing him to run a nominally civilian agency that has been converted into an "increasingly militarized" arm of the American war-fighting state, says all one needs to know about the fully bipartisan militarization of American policy. There's little functional difference between running America's multiple wars as a General and running them as CIA Director because American institutions in the National Security State are all devoted to the same overarching cause: Endless War.

* * * * *

I'm excited to be speaking tonight at FAIR's 25th anniversary event in New York, along with Noam Chomsky, Amy Goodman and Michael Moore. The event, which begins at 7:00 p.m., is sold out, but will be live-streamed in its entirety here.
More: Glenn Greenwald

Text Fwd: [Tom Burghardt] Invasive Cyber Technologies and Internet Privacy - Big Brother is only a "Ping" or Mouse Click Away

Global Research, October 11, 2010
Antifascist Calling, 2010-10-10
Invasive Cyber Technologies and Internet Privacy: Big Brother is only a "Ping" or Mouse Click Away
By Tom Burghardt

As they walked along the busy, yellow-lit tiers of offices, Anderton said: "You're acquainted with the theory of precrime, of course. I presume we can take that for granted."-- Philip K. Dick, The Minority Report

What do Google, the CIA and a host of so-called "predictive behavior" start-ups have in common?

They're interested in you, or more specifically, whether your online interests--from Facebook to Twitter posts, and from Flickr photos to YouTube and blog entries--can be exploited by powerful computer algorithms and subsequently transformed into "actionable intelligence."

And whether the knowledge gleaned from an IP address is geared towards selling useless junk or entering a name into a law enforcement database matters not a whit. It's all "just data" and "buzz" goes the mantra, along what little is left of our privacy and our rights.

Increasingly, secret state agencies ranging from the CIA to the National Security Agency are pouring millions of dollars into data-mining firms which claim they have a handle on who you are or what you might do in the future.

And to top it off, the latest trend in weeding-out dissenters and nonconformists from the social landscape will soon be invading a workplace near you; in fact, it already has.

Welcome to the sinister world of "Precrime" where capitalist grifters, drug- and torture-tainted spy shops are all laboring mightily to stamp out every last vestige of free thought here in the heimat.

The CIA Enters the Frame

In July, security journalist Noah Shachtman revealed in Wired that "the investment arms of the CIA and Google are both backing a company that monitors the web in real time--and says it uses that information to predict the future."

Shachtman reported that the CIA's semi-private investment company, In-Q-Tel, and Google Ventures, the search giant's business division had partnered-up with a dodgy outfit called Recorded Future pouring, according to some estimates, $20 million dollars into the fledgling firm.

A blurb on In-Q-Tel's web site informs us that "Recorded Future extracts time and event information from the web. The company offers users new ways to analyze the past, present, and the predicted future."

Who those ubiquitous though nameless "users" are or what they might do with that information once they "extract" it from the web is left unsaid. However, judging from the interest that a CIA-connected entity has expressed in funding the company, privacy will not figure prominently in the "new ways" such tools will be used.

Wired reported that the company, founded by former Swedish Army Ranger Christopher Ahlberg, "scours tens of thousands of websites, blogs and Twitter accounts to find the relationships between people, organizations, actions and incidents--both present and still-to-come."

"The cool thing is" Ahlberg said, "you can actually predict the curve, in many cases."

And as for the search giant's interest in "predicting the future" for the secret state, it wouldn't be the first time that Google Ventures sold equipment and expertise to America's shadow warriors.

While the firm may pride itself on the corporate slogan, "don't be evil," data is a valuable commodity. And where's there value, there's money to be made. Whether it comes in the form of "increasing share value" through the sale of private information to marketeers or state intelligence agencies eager to increase "situational awareness" of the "battlespace" is a matter of complete indifference to corporate bean counters.

After all, as Google CEO Eric Schmidt told CNBC last year, "if you have something that you don't want anyone to know, maybe you shouldn't be doing it in the first place."

But that standard, "only bad people have something to hide," is infinitely mutable and can be stretched--or manipulated as has so often been the case in the United States--to encompass everything from "Papist" conspiracies, "illegal" migrants, homosexuality, communism, drug use, or America's latest bête noire: the "Muslim threat."

Schmidt went on to say that "the reality is that search engines, including Google, do retain this information for some time. And we're all subject, in the U.S., to the Patriot Act, and it is possible that that information could be made available to the authorities."

In February, The Washington Post reported that "the world's largest Internet search company and the world's most powerful electronic surveillance organization are teaming up in the name of cybersecurity."

"The alliance" between Google and NSA "is being designed to allow the two organizations to share critical information without violating Google's policies or laws that protect the privacy of Americans' online communications," the Post alleged.

An anonymous source told the Post that "the deal does not mean the NSA will be viewing users' searches or e-mail accounts or that Google will be sharing proprietary data."

Really?

READ MORE

Text Fwd: U.S. 'secret war' expands globally as Special Operations forces take larger role

*Corazon Valdez Fabros informed the text.

Washington Post
U.S. 'secret war' expands globally as Special Operations forces take larger role
By Karen DeYoung and Greg Jaffe
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, June 4, 2010; A01

Beneath its commitment to soft-spoken diplomacy and beyond the combat zones of Afghanistan and Iraq, the Obama administration has significantly expanded a largely secret U.S. war against al-Qaeda and other radical groups, according to senior military and administration officials.

Special Operations forces have grown both in number and budget, and are deployed in 75 countries, compared with about 60 at the beginning of last year. In addition to units that have spent years in the Philippines and Colombia, teams are operating in Yemen and elsewhere in the Middle East, Africa and Central Asia.

Commanders are developing plans for increasing the use of such forces in Somalia, where a Special Operations raid last year killed the alleged head of al-Qaeda in East Africa. Plans exist for preemptive or retaliatory strikes in numerous places around the world, meant to be put into action when a plot has been identified, or after an attack linked to a specific group.

The surge in Special Operations deployments, along with intensified CIA drone attacks in western Pakistan, is the other side of the national security doctrine of global engagement and domestic values President Obama released last week.

One advantage of using "secret" forces for such missions is that they rarely discuss their operations in public. For a Democratic president such as Obama, who is criticized from either side of the political spectrum for too much or too little aggression, the unacknowledged CIA drone attacks in Pakistan, along with unilateral U.S. raids in Somalia and joint operations in Yemen, provide politically useful tools.

Obama, one senior military official said, has allowed "things that the previous administration did not."

'More access'

Special Operations commanders have also become a far more regular presence at the White House than they were under George W. Bush's administration, when most briefings on potential future operations were run through the Pentagon chain of command and were conducted by the defense secretary or the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.

"We have a lot more access," a second military official said. "They are talking publicly much less but they are acting more. They are willing to get aggressive much more quickly."

The White House, he said, is "asking for ideas and plans . . . calling us in and saying, 'Tell me what you can do. Tell me how you do these things.' "

The Special Operations capabilities requested by the White House go beyond unilateral strikes and include the training of local counterterrorism forces and joint operations with them. In Yemen, for example, "we are doing all three," the official said. Officials who spoke about the increased operations were not authorized to discuss them on the record.

The clearest public description of the secret-war aspects of the doctrine came from White House counterterrorism director John O. Brennan. He said last week that the United States "will not merely respond after the fact" of a terrorist attack but will "take the fight to al-Qaeda and its extremist affiliates whether they plot and train in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Yemen, Somalia and beyond."

That rhetoric is not much different than Bush's pledge to "take the battle to the enemy . . . and confront the worst threats before they emerge." The elite Special Operations units, drawn from all four branches of the armed forces, became a frontline counterterrorism weapon for the United States after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.

But Obama has made such forces a far more integrated part of his global security strategy. He has asked for a 5.7 percent increase in the Special Operations budget for fiscal 2011, for a total of $6.3 billion, plus an additional $3.5 billion in 2010 contingency funding.

Bush-era clashes between the Defense and State departments over Special Operations deployments have all but ceased. Former defense secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld saw them as an independent force, approving in some countries Special Operations intelligence-gathering missions that were so secret that the U.S. ambassador was not told they were underway. But the close relationship between Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates and Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton is said to have smoothed out the process.

"In some places, we are quite obvious in our presence," Adm. Eric T. Olson, head of the Special Operations Command, said in a speech. "In some places, in deference to host-country sensitivities, we are lower in profile. In every place, Special Operations forces activities are coordinated with the U.S. ambassador and are under the operational control of the four-star regional commander."

Chains of command

Gen. David H. Petraeus at the Central Command and others were ordered by the Joint Staff under Bush to develop plans to use Special Operations forces for intelligence collection and other counterterrorism efforts, and were given the authority to issue direct orders to them. But those orders were formalized only last year, including in a CENTCOM directive outlining operations throughout South Asia, the Horn of Africa and the Middle East.

The order, whose existence was first reported by the New York Times, includes intelligence collection in Iran, although it is unclear whether Special Operations forces are active there.

The Tampa-based Special Operations Command is not entirely happy with its subordination to regional commanders and, in Afghanistan and Iraq, to theater commanders. Special Operations troops within Afghanistan had their own chain of command until early this year, when they were brought under the unified direction of the overall U.S. and NATO commander there, Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal, and his operational deputy, Lt. Gen. David M. Rodriguez.

"Everybody working in CENTCOM works for Dave Petraeus," a military official said. "Our issue is that we believe our theater forces should be under a Special Operations theater commander, instead of . . . Rodriguez, who is a conventional [forces] guy who doesn't know how to do what we do."

Special Operations troops train for years in foreign cultures and language, and consider themselves a breed apart from what they call "general purpose forces." Special Operations troops sometimes bridle at ambassadorial authority to "control who comes in and out of their country," the official said. Operations have also been hindered in Pakistan -- where Special Operations trainers hope to nearly triple their current deployment to 300 -- by that government's delay in issuing the visas.

Although pleased with their expanded numbers and funding, Special Operations commanders would like to devote more of their force to global missions outside war zones. Of about 13,000 Special Operations forces deployed overseas, about 9,000 are evenly divided between Iraq and Afghanistan.

"Eighty percent of our investment is now in resolving current conflicts, not in building capabilities with partners to avoid future ones," one official said.

Questions remain

The force has also chafed at the cumbersome process under which the president or his designee, usually Gates, must authorize its use of lethal force outside war zones. Although the CIA has the authority to designate targets and launch lethal missiles in Pakistan's western tribal areas, attacks such as last year's in Somalia and Yemen require civilian approval.

The United Nations, in a report this week, questioned the administration's authority under international law to conduct such raids, particularly when they kill innocent civilians. One possible legal justification -- the permission of the country in question -- is complicated in places such as Pakistan and Yemen, where the governments privately agree but do not publicly acknowledge approving the attacks.

Former Bush officials, still smarting from accusations that their administration overextended the president's authority to conduct lethal activities around the world at will, have asked similar questions. "While they seem to be expanding their operations both in terms of extraterritoriality and aggressiveness, they are contracting the legal authority upon which those expanding actions are based," said John B. Bellinger III, a senior legal adviser in both of Bush's administrations.

The Obama administration has rejected the constitutional executive authority claimed by Bush and has based its lethal operations on the authority Congress gave the president in 2001 to use "all necessary and appropriate force against those nations, organizations, or persons" he determines "planned, authorized, committed, or aided" the Sept. 11 attacks.

Many of those currently being targeted, Bellinger said, "particularly in places outside Afghanistan," had nothing to do with the 2001 attacks.

[국문 번역: Protest Call] Update added:Drone Protest at CIA HQ - Jan 16 미 중앙 정보부앞 무인 비행기 반대 시위 2010년 1월 16일

Update 2
Bruce Gagnon blog
Wednesday, January 20, 2010
DRONE BANNER DROP AT SMITHSONIAN IN DC



_____________________________________________________________________
Update 1




Bruce Gagnon blog
Sunday, January 17, 2010
REPORT ON CIA DRONE PROTEST TRIP

"I was invited by activist Cindy Sheehan to speak at the CIA drone protest held on Saturday afternoon (January 16) outside their Langley, Virginia headquarters. As we arrived we saw big orange barricades all along the road with yellow “crime scene” plastic tape stretched all along the highway and also draped from tree to tree in the narrow spit of woods separating the four-lane road and the CIA fortress. A 50-yard open area was our protest “zone” and was totally encircled by the yellow tape. The clear message to the many cars blasting by us was: “Don’t go near those inside the yellow tape. A crime is now being committed by them.” A massive number of CIA cops and Fairfax County police had us surrounded, even from inside the patch of woods.

Cindy had worked hard in recent weeks to promote the event, primarily by Facebook and regular emails. She told us that her Facebook page was “mysteriously” taken down in the last week creating the impression amongst some that the event had been cancelled. As it turned out just over 100 people showed up for the event. A good percentage of the folks there were the Catholic Worker activists (Witness Against Torture) who have been valiantly continuing their daily “no torture” protests in front of the White House. Dressed in their orange prison garb with black hoods over their heads they were a strong reminder of the CIA directed detentions and interrogations at Guantanamo and other such hell-holes run by the U.S. around the world.

Singer/songwriter David Rovics was there to perform but had to do so without a sound system as it didn’t work. A former FBI agent, turned peace activist after being fired for refusing to investigate hunger-striking veterans protesting U.S. illegal wars in Central America in the 1980’s, told his moving story. Kathy Kelly spoke in her usual animated and heart-rending way about the people of Afghanistan and Pakistan who are suffering the reality of drone strikes. Cindy Sheehan told us about the many messages she was getting from Pakistan where people were thrilled to hear that Americans were actually protesting at the CIA’s HQ.

My friend Will Van Natta drove up from southeast Florida for the event. He is a lifeguard in West Palm Beach and in 1997 swam about 20 miles in the ocean to protest the launch of the Cassini plutonium spacecraft. His courageous action was a huge media event and reminded us that if we each just do what we are “good at” then our contributions can be enormous. He has just bought time on a local radio station and will air his own weekly progressive talk show.

When I spoke at the protest I said how glad I was to be there for the first time in my life. The CIA, and their drone attacks, is the symbol of the corporatization and privatization of U.S. war policy. The running of wars has essentially been taken away from a neutered Congress and put into the hands of the secret cabal that now runs our government. We need to shine a light on this.

I also of course talked about how U.S. space technology controls the drones as it does most Pentagon “net centric” war fighting these days. Robotic warfare might be “hands off” and “out of sight-out of mind” but it is still dirty and is killing legions of civilians.

I reminded folks that drone and other robotic devices were ultimately just manifestations of a larger war and domination policy. We need to keep putting in front of the public the big picture and I went on to talk about “security export”, the U.S. role under corporation globalization of the world economy. Endless war is America’s future and social collapse at home will be the end result unless a movement springs up quickly.

On the train ride to DC I began reading a new book called “Democracy’s Prisoner: Eugene V. Debs, The Great War, and The Right to Dissent.”

Debs is my hero in American history. He ran for president five times as a Socialist and the last time, 1920, did so from the Atlanta penitentiary where he was jailed for having spoken out against U.S. participation in World War I. Arrested under the “Sedition Act” Debs and many others were jailed for opposing President Woodrow Wilson’s military draft and his decision to move the U.S. into that bloody war.

I began my CIA protest speech by telling a story from this book. Wilson was elected as the “peace candidate” in 1916 saying that he would keep the U.S. out of the European war. But immediately after the election was over Wilson turned and began a massive national war mobilization and cracked down hard on the large anti-war movement that existed prior to the election.

The book, written by Ernest Freeberg, recounts, “For many, the conflict was still distant and incomprehensible. Christian pacifists, agrarian populists, and many progressive reformers believed that Wilson’s decision to intervene in Europe betrayed the nation’s highest principles, while the Socialists still insisted that the country would be fighting ‘for the interest of financial freebooters [corporations] only.’ Most of the liberal peace organizations either disbanded or supported Wilson’s war to end all wars, but many individuals from those groups dreaded the prospect of having to choose between their country and their conscience.”

One man in the crowd outside the CIA HQ yelled out at this point asking me if I was trying to make a “subtle” comparison to Obama? Of course I was. Obama is now doing what Wilson did during his time in office, neutralize the left and fragment the anti-war movement. We need to learn from these lessons of history.

I ended my talk by sharing the story about our recent launch of the Bring Our War $ Home campaign in Maine. I said, “In Maine we are calling on our two congresspersons to not only vote against further war spending bills but also become leaders in the House against war. The House is where we might have a slim chance to block any more war funding but we are going to have to first enliven our local communities and states. If we want to stop war then we have to fight to save social progress at home. If we want to ground the drones we have to connect them to the suffering people all over this nation who will increasingly be the brunt of this mad war for corporate control.

“Good luck to you all and get organized.”

_____________________________________________________________________

Click on image for full view

이미지를 클릭 하시면 크게 보임

* Original English Image source 원문 이미지 소스:
Organizing Notes and Space4Peace.org

*

_____________________________________________________________________
FLYER 1 (above)전단 1 (위)

* Sent from Bruce Gagnon on Dec. 26, 2009
브루스 개그논으로부터 2009년 12월 26일 보내짐

'NO MURDEROUS CIA DRONES!
'살인적인 미 중앙 정보부 무인 비행기 반대'
Saturday, January 16, 2010
2010년 1월 16일. 토요일
1:00pm - 4:00pm
오후 1시부터 4시

CIA Headquarters (Langley, Virginia)
미 중앙 정보부 본부 (버지니아주 랭글리)

It was recently announced that the White House gave the CIA permission to increase its drone bombings in Pakistan of which to date over 1/3rd of the deaths are civilian.

백악관이 파키스탄에서 드로운(무인 비행기)의 공격을 늘리도록 미 중앙 정보부를 허락한 사실이 최근에 발표되었는데 현재까지 사망자의 1/3이 민간인이었다.

The CIA is a profoundly violent and corrupt organization and, while we don't think the Military should be using manned, or unmanned aerial vehicles, we think the drone bombings from CIA robots are particularly despicable.

미 중앙 정보부는 심오하게 폭력적이고 타락한 단체로서 우리는 군대가 유인 비행기 또는 무인 비행기를 사용해야 한다고 생각하지 않은 동시에 미 중앙 정보부 로봇들로부터 가해지는 무인 비행기 공격은 특히 경멸할 만한 것이라고 생각한다.

Many of us will be in the DC area for the Witness Against Torture vigil-fast from Dec 11-22, so we decided to do this protest on Saturday, January 16th.

우리중의 많은 이들이 고문을 반대하는 증인 침번-단식을 서기 위해 수도 워싱턴에 [1월] 11일부터 22일까지 있을 것이다. 그래서 이 시위를 1월16일, 토요일 하기로 했다.


Speakers: Cindy Sheehan, Cynthia McKinney, Kathy Kelly, Debra Sweet and Col. (Ret.) Ann Wright, Bruce Gagnon, Joshua Smith (Technical Briefing).

연설자들: 신디 시핸, 신시아 맥키니, 캐티 켈리, 데브라 스위트. 그리고 퇴역 육군 대령 앤 라이트, 브루스 개그논, 조슈아 스미스(기술 개요)

Songs of Social Significance to be performed by David Rovics. http://www.davidrovics.com/

사회적으로 중요한 노래들이 데이비드 로빅스에 의해 공연. http://www.davidrovics.com/


Please join us if you can!

할 수 있다면 참가하시길.

Temporary Download Link for CIA Protest Flyer PDF:
미 중앙 정보부 앞 시위 전단은 잠정적으로 여기를 클릭(영문)
http://www.ipdop.org/cia_drone_protest_flyer.pdf


Global Network Against Weapons & Nuclear Power in Space
우주의 무기와 핵을 반대하는 글로벌 넷워크
PO Box 652
Brunswick, ME 04011
(207) 443-9502
globalnet@mindspring.com
www.space4peace.org
http://space4peace.blogspot.com/ (blog)'


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FLYER 2 (bottom)전단 1 (아래)

국문 번역문을 사이트로 보려면 여기를 클릭 (2009 년 1월 3일 엎데이트)
Too see the Korean translation in site, click HERE. (Update on Jan. 3, 2009)

____________________________________________________________________________

For more on Drones, please see the Global Network Against Weapons & Nuclear Power in Space site. Click HERE.
드로운 (무인 비행기)에 관한 더 많은 정보는 우주의 무기와 핵을 반대하는 글로벌 넷워크 사이트를 보실 것. 여기를 클릭.





Drones: Predators and Reapers - campaigning presentation [by MacGregor Eddy]
드로운(무인 비행기): 프리데이터와 리퍼- 캠페인 프리젠테이션 [맥그리거 에디 제작]

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* 한국인들을 위해 For Koreans

무인비행기와 미사일 방어에 관한 글/ 비디오들

글들 Writings

http://nobasestorieskorea.blogspot.com/2009/09/text-fwd-predator-execs-eye-global.html
Monday, September 21, 2009
[국문 번역] Text Fwd: Drones and Missile Defense to be Linked
"무인비행기와 미사일 방어의 연관성"

http://nobasestorieskorea.blogspot.com/2009/09/text-fwd-missile-defense-other-story.html
Friday, September 18, 2009
[국문 번역]Text Fwd: MISSILE DEFENSE: THE OTHER STORY
미사일 방어: 또 다른 이야기(브루스 개그논 씀)

http://nobasestorieskorea.blogspot.com/2009/09/text-fwd-attack-of-drones.html
Monday, September 14, 2009
[국문 번역] Text Fwd: Attack of the drones
무인 비행기의 공격

http://nobasestorieskorea.blogspot.com/2009/09/text-fwd-militarising-space-fallujah.html
Wednesday, September 9, 2009
[국문 번역]Text Fwd: Militarising space: The Fallujah fallacy
우주 공간의 군사화: 팔루쟈 궤변

비디오 Videos

http://nobasestorieskorea.blogspot.com/2009/09/video-fwd-killer-bee-uavs.html
Tuesday, September 22, 2009
[국문 번역]Video Fwd: KILLER BEE UAV'S
살인벌 무인 비행기

http://nobasestorieskorea.blogspot.com/2009/09/slife-fwd-drones-remote-control-war.html
Sunday, September 6, 2009
[국문 번역] Slide Fwd: DRONES: Remote Control War
무인비행기: 원격 조정 전쟁

무인 비행기 및 한국 우주 항공 산업 요약

http://nobasestorieskorea.blogspot.com/2010/01/text-fwd-exclusive-s-korea-to-transfer.html
Thursday, January 7, 2010
Text fwd: [Exclusive] S. Korea to Transfer UAV, Missile Technologies to UAE
[호외] 남한, 유나이티드 아랍 에미레이츠에 무인 비행기, 미사일 기술 전달 예정

http://nobasestorieskorea.blogspot.com/2009/12/text-fwd-portion-for-defense-r-cost.html

Wednesday, December 23, 2009
[국문] Text Fwd: The Portion for the Defense R&D Cost Would Be Increased to 10% of the Whole Defense Budget, by 2010.
(Unofficial translation of National Defense News, ROK: 'Unmanned Combat System' mentioned)
국방연구개발비 비중확대 2020년 국방비 대비 10%로
(국방 뉴스를 번역한 것으로 무인 전투 시스템 언급)

http://nobasestorieskorea.blogspot.com/2009/09/blog-post.html
Tuesday, September 22, 2009
[국문] Summary of the UAV and Korea Aero Industry Space
무인 비행기 및 한국 우주 항공 산업 요약
(by No Base Stories of Korea)

http://nobasestorieskorea.blogspot.com/2009/08/text-fwd-unmanned-us-spy-plane-crashes.html
Tuesday, August 25, 2009
[국문 번역] Text Fwd: Unmanned US spy plane crashes near inter-Korean border
2007년 8월 27일
미국 무인 첩보 비행기, 한반도 분단선 경계 근처에서 추락하다.

http://nobasestorieskorea.blogspot.com/search/label/Korea%20Aerospace%20Industries
Collection of the blogs of the Korea Aerospace Industry
한국 우주 항공 산업 블로그 모음 (대부분 영문)

Text Fwd: Blackwater arming US drones for CIA: NYT

Blackwater’s role in the program shows the extent to which the CIA now depends on private contractors to carry out some of the agency’s most crucial assignments. — Photo by Reuters

* Informed in Keep Space for Peace Week Campaign, 2009

Blackwater arming US drones for CIA: NYT
Friday, 21 Aug, 2009

According to a New York Times report, the Blackwater private security firm (now known as Xe) has taken up a role in America’s most important and contentious counterterrorism program: the use of unmanned drones to kill al-Qaeda leaders.

These operations are being executed from hidden basis inside Pakistan and Afghanistan where Blackwater’s contractors gather and load Hellfire missiles and 500-pound laser-guided bombs on remotely operated Predator aircraft, the NYT quotes company and government officials as saying.

Previously this was done by CIA employees. Now, Blackwater employees also provide security at these bases, the officials said.

Blackwater’s role in the program shows the extent to which the CIA now depends on independent, private contractors to carry out some of the agency’s most crucial assignments.

A CIA spokesman declined comment.

On Thursday, the NYT reported that the CIA has hired Blackwater in 2004 as part of a secret program to local and assassinate top al-Qaeda leaders.

Later on Thursday, current and former government officials provided new information regarding Blackwater’s links with the assassination program which began in 2004. Soon after, Porter Goss took over the CIA.

The officials however said the CIA did not dispatch Blackwater operatives with a ‘license to kill’. Instead, the CIA ordered the contractors to start collecting information on the leaders’ whereabouts, carry out surveillance and train for missions that may be likely.

‘The actual pulling of a trigger in some ways is the easiest part, and the part that requires the least expertise,’ said one government official familiar with the cancelled CIA program. ‘It’s everything that leads up to it that’s the meat of the issue.’

Any such measure of capturing or killing militants was to be approved by the CIA director and presented to the White House before being carried out, officials told the New York Times.

The program was however cancelled by the agency’s current director Leon Panetta who had also informed the Congress of the program’s existence in a meeting in June.

The details of the business between CIA and Blackwater have largely been hidden, but its contract with the State Department to provide security to US officials in Iraq has been intensely scrutinised.

Blackwater lost its job in Iraq this year after five of its employees were involved in shootings in 2007 that left more than a dozen Iraqis dead. However, Blackwater still has other, less prominent State Department work.

Five former Blackwater guards have already been indicted on charges regarding the 2007 Iraq shootings.

A Blackwater (Xe) spokeswoman declined to comment over the role of the company with regard to these cases.

The company’s intelligence work is carried out by Blackwater Select, a special division of Blackwater.

Blackwater’s first principal contract with the CIA was signed in 2002. It entailed providing security for the agency’s Kabul station.

Blackwater operatives assigned to the Predator bases are trained at the Nellis Air Force Base in Nevada. They are taught how to load Hellfire missiles and laser-guided smart bombs on the drones, current and former employees say.

The agency has for many years operated Predator drones out of a remote base in Shamsi, Pakistan. However, a second site at an air base in Jalalabad, Afghanistan has been secretly added, company and US government officials said.

The existence of the Predator base in Jalalabad has not previously been reported, the New York Times said.

Meanwhile, now the CIA conducts most of its Predator drone strikes on targets in the Afghanistan-Pakistan border region from the Jalalabad base, with drones landing or taking off almost hourly. The base in Pakistan is still in use.

Officials say the US decided to open the Afghanistan operation partly because of the possibility that the Pakistani government, facing growing anti-US sentiment at home, might force the CIA to close the one in Pakistan.

Blackwater is not involved in selecting targets or actual strikes, the NYT says. Targets are selected by the CIA. However, only a handful of the agency’s operatives actually work at the Predator bases in Afghanistan and Pakistan.

Blackwater’s current and former employees say the company’s direct role in these operations has occasionally led to disputes with the agency. When a drone misses a target, CIA operatives accuse Blackwater of poor bomb assembly, they say. In one instance in 2008 a 500-pound bomb dropped off a drone before hitting the target. That lead to a frantic search for the unexploded bomb in the Pak-Afghan border region. The bomb was eventually found about 100 yards from the actual target.

The role of contractors in intelligence operations expanded after September 11 as intelligence agencies had to fill gaps created by reduced work forces during the 1990s.

At this point, more than a quarter of the intelligence community’s work force constitutes of contractors who carry out tasks of intelligence gathering and analysis, and until recently, terrorist suspects’ interrogation.

‘There are skills we don’t have in government that we may have an immediate requirement for,’ Michael Hayden, who ran the CIA from 2006 until early this year, said.

Hayden, who succeeded Goss at the agency, recognised that the CIA program continued under his watch. He said the program was never ‘prominent’, which was one reason he did not notify Congress. He said it did not engage private contractors by the time he came in.

Senator Dianne Feinstein, the California Democrat who presides over the Senate Intelligence Committee, said the agency should have notified Congress in any event.

‘Every single intelligence operation and covert action must be briefed to the Congress,’ she said. ‘If they are not, that is a violation of the law.’

Text & Video Fwd: THE SHOW MUST GO ON

* Bruce Gagnon's blog on June 29, 2009
THE SHOW MUST GO ON



This is a really important video by Bill Moyers from some years ago on the power of the CIA.

Last year I read a book called The Game Player by a former CIA agent Miles Copeland. He was pro-CIA and very enthusiastic about having worked for the oil corporations during the period of 1950-1970ish.

Copeland worked in the Middle East and with great affection told story after story about helping to kill or neutralize those who stood in the way of corporate control of the oil region.

In one section, where he talks extensively about Egypt, he tells the story about how former Nazi operatives were weaved into the CIA Middle East operation:

"The idea of planting on Middle Eastern governments Germans suspected of war crimes had a lot to say for it, because they were generally both anti-American and anti-Soviet, and presumed to be anti-Semitic and therefore anti-Israel. Most of them were also anti-Arab, although they had the wit to conceal that fact. Anyhow, all of them were opportunists, willing to work for anyone who paid them, and they happily passed on to their Middle Eastern employers any advice prescribed for them. Naturally, we had some trouble in getting clearance for projects involving the use of Nazis and ex-Nazis, but our difficulties disappeared when our friends in Israel's Mossad admitted that they, too, were using ex-Nazis for a number of nefarious purposes, and for the same reasons that they were attractive to us."

Copeland eventually leaves the CIA and goes to work directly for oil corporations but continues doing the same covert work. He described how often, when he would enter a particular Middle Eastern country to work on an operation, the US Embassy and the CIA assigned there did not know what he was doing. His orders were coming from a "higher authority". The secret government at work. It's even more so today.

Yesterday we had our monthly pot luck supper here at the Addams-Melman House. It was a pouring buckets-of-rain day, and I spent alot of time talking with one woman peace elder in our state. She voted for Obama and told me "I just don't want to believe" that he has been such a disappointment. The feeling of betrayal is beginning to creep into her soul. What is left to do she wondered? Take the money out of politics and instant run-off voting (IRV), she asked? Yes I told her, those are good but even if we had that the corporate dominated media would make sure their interests would win elections 9-times-out-of-10. In the end we have to take the whole system on I suggested.

Then this morning I got a call from a Global Network member in conservative Indiana. He had seen my new video and wanted to put it on his cable TV show - his lifeline. He talked for some time about how their local peace group, before the elections drawing a couple hundred to events, was now down to six stubborn people. He too had voted for Obama but was glad to see my critical review of Obama's foreign policy on the video.

We all need permission at times to keep at it, especially when the slogging gets tough. As Pink Floyd says, "I've become comfortably numb."

I told my friend, he is a Veteran for Peace member too, that we've got to see the incoming and outgoing ocean tides in our minds. The rush of activism comes and it goes. The job of an organizer is to keep the fires burning during the out-tide so that when the people inevitably return there is a place for them to move into immediate action. In the lull period we have to stay visible in every possible way and to keep putting the pieces of the puzzle up on the wall so people can begin to interpret the whole picture.

The people though, in their hearts, know the true score. But everyone wants to be liked and they have long ago learned to "toe the line" as they taught us in the military. Take away all desire and will to step out when told by the oligarchy to sit down and shut up.

Eventually though people will be forced off the dime and back into action. The contradictions are catching up with the collapsing system and they are a bit hard to ignore these days.

But we have to go global. We seen people in Iran protesting as they become victims of the big power game now underway spelled - OIL. The only way to take down the global corporate power elite is to link our realities to this larger picture.

But at the same time the place to do that work is locally. We've got to help our fellow citizens to move from fear and lethargy into action. It's a lifetime gift.