The Voice of the White House

Washington, D.C.,  April 10, 2008: “The CIA has never done anything right and its blunders have been very costly in human life and destructive to anything or anyone who gets in the way of what their idiotic leaders believe is in their own, not the nation’s, interest.

As a case in point, here is an overview (if I printed this verbatim, they would turn this place upside down to find and prosecute me) of the CIA’s meddling in Chinese affairs, both actual and projected.

Know that no one controls the CIA. For many years, they controlled us in that they had strong connections with corporate media and the top levels of the government. They could do as they liked.

A friend of some deputy director was having his overseas properties grabbed by some local dictator so the CIA wrote a fake position paper that “proved” the evil Communists were taking over the government in that country and Something Had To Be Done! And it was.

The students rebelled, (the CIA is big on infiltrating and supporting the volatile student population of target countries) dissidents in exile were given money and guns and guess what, the evil dictator was replaced with someone the CIA hand-picked.

Here we have Guatemala but now they are aiming at total disruption of the PRC.

The Company is behind the uproar in Tibet and is fomenting rebellious thoughts in the China ’s muslim population. They feel that Taiwan is now a lost cause so the Station in Islamabad is leading the fight to cause so much internal trouble in China that it starts to fall apart from within.

Under discussion has been the possible introduction of a laboratory-concocted blight aimed at the Asian rice crop. Since all of Asia depends on rice as a staple diet item, the sudden (and unexplained) spread of a blight that ruins the crop would do terrible damage all over Asia but especially in China .

One of the Islamabad reports, a copy of which is circulating here, explains that China is ripe for internal collapse. She has a huge population which she is having problems feeding and she has no oil for her burgeoning industry and has to import all of it. China is also now a meat-eating country and they need American corn to feed their cattle.

The CIA has worked it so that American farmers are growing corn for Ethanol and not for export. Oh, there is enough corn  for domestic consumption but interestingly enough, not enough for export except at a very high price.

They are taking a leaf from Vladimir Putin’s book. He took Russian oil away from the pro-US Jewish oligarchs and nationalized it. Now, he controls the oil and the U.S. is getting squeezed. The CIA is doing the same thing to the Chinese and they reason that if the food supplies start to dry up there and by some means their oil imports can be cut back, China will implode and cease to be a potential threat to the U.S. And if the potentially rebellious Chinese minorities can be roused up, like their past actions in arming the Taliban against Russia in Afghanistan , they have a winner.

With the CIA’s connections with corporate media, look for more sad horror stories about Tibet . Tibet resonates far better than Dafur does with the American people. They, and Bush, are very upset about the shift in political winds in Pakistan . It looks like assonating Bhutto did not work they way they wanted it to because all it did was to guarantee that the wrong people came into power and now our wings have been clipped there. It is not too difficult to off one woman but to take out all of the Pakistan judicial system and their legislators is too much even for the CIA. The Ukraine operation (taking the Ukraine out of Putin’s orbit) was typical of their style but they waited too long and mis-stepped in Islamabad

At any rate, look for more fireworks about the Olympics and know the whys and wherefores of that situation.”.

Tibet : Will the USA Launch a New Secret War “Under the Roof of the World”?

March 18, 2008

by Andrei Areshev

iraq-war.ru

The current unrest in the Tibetan autonomy of the Chinese People’s Republic (seemingly unexpected) has continued for over a week. Manifestations organised by Buddhist monks on the occasion of an anniversary of Tibet’s annexation by China led to mass clashes with police, violence, fires and robbery. The tragic events coincided with the regular session of the All-China Assembly of People’s Representatives, acquiring a dramatic scale and have already led to deaths, forcing Beijing to use active army to crack down on the riots.

Western sources report the spread of unrest in the provinces neighbouring with Tibet (in particular Sichuan ) and mass repressions by the Chinese authorities, holding them up in an utterly negative aspect. And here we have an evident parallel with the way western media covered the activities of the Yugoslav army and police in Kosovo in 1998, immediately before the NATO aggression. Primary sources of information whose precision is hard to verify, are chiefly Tibetan émigrés in the neighbouring countries and western human rights NGOs. For example, according to Thubten Sampkhel, a representative of the Tibetan “government–in-exile” 80 protestors were killed and 72 wounded. He says eyewitnesses in Tibet who did the actual counting verified the figures. Official Chinese sources say that 10 people died. Some pro-Tibetan reports are deliberately over dramatising the situation. For example there are reports about the involvement of Chinese troops in mass killings of Tibetans; others say the “Tibetans in Amdo province have no intention of surrendering and are resolute to continues protests till the start of this year’s Olympic Games in Beijing”1.

The current developments can indeed do great harm to China taking place shortly before the 2008 Summer Olympic Games. Demonstrators in Lhasa have become the gravest challenge to the Chinese rule in Tibet over the past two decades, raising a worldwide wave of protests, and holding China up in an unfavourable light on the eve of the Olympics,” – the Associated Press puts it flatly. However the current events in that mountainous district have also an even greater geopolitical significance.

Experts on events in different continents and nations including Africa , Latin America , Myanmar , the Central Asia , the Middle East or Pakistan constantly stress the presence of elements of Chinese and American confrontation that is not always evident but nevertheless not less tense. In particular, one of the causes of the intervention in Iraq and the incessant threats to Iran can be accounted for by the striving to give China very poor energy rationing2.

It can be confidently argued that the present-day troubles faced by Washington ’s chief geopolitical rival would be completely taken advantage of with an eye to pushing their development in a favourable direction. U.S. State Secretary Condoleezza Rice has already called on China to exert “moderation” in order to overcome the current political crisis in the Tibetan autonomy. Having said she was sad over the unrest in the Tibetan administrative centre, Lhasa that followed protests and caused deaths, Condozleezza Rice said she was worried over reports about the growing police and army presence in Lhasa, calling on both sides to refrain from violence. Mrs. State Secretary preferred not to say that setting shops and buildings on fire and robbery did not fit well in the picture of peaceful protesting. She rather recalled that president Gorge W.Bush “has consistently called on China ’s government to have a constructive dialogue” with the Dalai Lama, the spiritual leader of Tibetan Buddhists both directly or negotiating with his representatives…” On behalf of the U.S. administration Mrs. Rice called on Beijing to modify those aspects of its Tibetan policies that “have led to tension caused by their impact on the local religion, culture and sources of subsistence.”

It can be assumed that over the past several years the Tibetan national movement has become significantly more radical, so Beijing would find it hard to see eye to eye with it. In the oblique way this is evidenced by the scope and the skill of organisation of protests, as well as the wave of anti-China manifestations simultaneously sweeping over many countries from the United States and France to Nepal and Australia . The Kosovo independence issue could not fail to inspire supporters of complete Tibet ’s independence from China either. Washington realises this and for the time being continues to make a stake of the Dalai Lama, the champion of “peaceful non-violent forms of protest”, some sort of the “Tibetan Ibrahim Rugova.” The Tibetan spiritual leader enjoys a wide public support in the West, suffice it to recall his meeting with G.Bush, Sr. at the ceremony of awarding the Dalai Lama with the Gold Medal of U.S. Congress in October of 2007.

The spiritual leader of Tibetan Buddhists has already called for an international inquiry into China ’s crackdown. His statement in Dharamsala3 says: ”The relevant international organisations should look into the Tibetan situation to clarify its causes.” The Dalai Lama has called the activities of Chinese authorities as “cultural genocide.”4

The Dalai Lama – willingly or not – is effectively preparing starting grounds for more radical forces that are about to launch an attack, enjoying political, propaganda and other sorts of support primarily from forces across the Atlantic .

The U.S. involvement in the internal affairs of Tibet and its relations with China have developed for several decades. After China annexed Tibet in 1949 and after the annexation of Hamand and Amdo provinces in 1956, on the initiative of the U.S. government the CIA started its “secret war” in the mountains of Tibet . In October of 1957, an aeroplane with no identification marks took off from a field aerodrome near Dakka carrying the first two Tibetans the CIA had trained for a month. Landing in the designated location close to Lhasa they soon established contacts with the leader of local insurgents. The Lhasa uprising started soon after, and the Dalai Lama fled. In 1958, in total secrecy, over 30 Tibetans began their training at the Camp Hale base in Colorado . Overall, more than 300 Tibetans were trained there. Starting from July, 1958 the CIA began flying C-130 aircraft from its secret base in Thailand , delivering weapons, ordnance and trained militants. More than 400 tonnes of cargo were delivered in 1957 through 1960. In one of the sabotage operations by Tibetans Chief of the Western Tibetan military district was killed, having on him vitally important documents of the Chinese Communist party. Langley obtained priceless information about China ’s domestic situation, the state of its army, the PRC nuclear programmes and the rifts between Peking and Moscow that began to take place. By the early 1960s U.S. secret services spent an annual $1.7 million a year in Tibet with about $500,000 allocated for the support of 2,100 guerrillas (including 800 armed militants), mainly based in Nepal , and some $180,000 for the Dalai Lama’s personal needs. When later relations between Washington and Beijing improved, the activities of Tibetan agents were temporarily suspended. Tibetans paid a death toll of 87,000 in crackdowns of uprisings and armed clashes only…

It is to be noted that the then role of China and its economy in world affairs was not very big, but Washington was adamantly pursuing its policies of interference in Chinese internal affairs in one of its “problem outskirts.” This has become even more evident in modern times when the global struggle for influence and resources has become fiercer than ever. With the Dalai Lama completing his mission one day, he will be replaced by other people who, with the support of external forces would attempt to challenge China ’s national unity as a state. There will also appear other points of “application of force” aside from Tibet , for example Xiangyang-Uigur autonomy and Inner Mongolia … External policy complications would not take long to arrive. It can be assumed that the current situation would dramatically affect relations between China and India , whom Washington is aggressively trying to draw into its orbit, and more than that.

Unrest in Tibet can unforeseeably echo in Russia , especially in the territories with a sizeable number of Buddhist population. Shows of support of Tibetan manifestators can happen in Kalmykia, Buriatia and Tuva. Ch. Budaev, Chairman of “Lamrim” Buddhist community and the Central Spiritual Buddhist Authority has already expressed hope that the developments in Tibet would lead the way for democratic changes in the Chinese society. According to him, democracy in Russia was consolidated after the well-known events of the 1990s that were given broad international coverage.

“I’d like to believe,” – Ch.Budaev said, “that the alarming developments in Tibet we are now witnessing would in the long run lead to democratisation of the Chinese society.”5

Thus, attempts of the external forces to propose a Gorbachev-Yeltsin scenario of China ’s “democratisation” directly bring the developments in Tibet into the realm of Russia ’s foreign and domestic policies.

The Coming Storm

When Malthus wrote his essay on population, his second chapter stated that while the population increased geometrically, food supply only increased arithmetically. Malthus was right but at the time he wrote, no one actually believed him. Now, we are experiencing the truth of his wordy thesis. The following articles deals with the rapidly accelerating worldwide shortage of food. Countries producing rice are now keeping as much of it as necessary to feed their own populations. A hungry people can make revolutions. We have seen food riots recently in Haiti , Cairo and Italy but the real proof of the Malthusian theory is yet to come. Wheat-growing countries like the United States , Canada and the Argentine are facing the question of continuing exporting of the crop or keeping it to feed its own people. There is no question what their decisions will be or of what will happen around the world. Australia , once a large wheat grower, has had almost a decade of terrible drought and is no longer considered a reliable source of supply. China has an enormous population, almost no natural resources, especially  oil, and suffers from uncontrolled grown coupled with an equally uncontrolled capitalism, wedded to a thoroughly corrupt Marxist government. They must export goods for capital and import food for political stability. At one point, the ascending graph lines of population increases intersect with the descending ones of food production and the results are entirely predictable. BH

Editorial

The World Food Crisis

April 10, 2008

New York Times

Most Americans take food for granted. Even the poorest fifth of households in the United States spend only 16 percent of their budget on food. In many other countries, it is less of a given. Nigerian families spend 73 percent of their budgets to eat, Vietnamese 65 percent, Indonesians half. They are in trouble.

Last year, the food import bill of developing countries rose by 25 percent as food prices rose to levels not seen in a generation. Corn doubled in price over the last two years. Wheat reached its highest price in 28 years. The increases are already sparking unrest from Haiti to Egypt . Many countries have imposed price controls on food or taxes on agricultural exports.

Last week, the president of the World Bank, Robert Zoellick, warned that 33 nations are at risk of social unrest because of the rising prices of food. “For countries where food comprises from half to three-quarters of consumption, there is no margin for survival,” he said.

Prices are unlikely to drop soon. The United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization says world cereal stocks this year will be the lowest since 1982.

The United States and other developed countries need to step up to the plate. The rise in food prices is partly because of uncontrollable forces — including rising energy costs and the growth of the middle class in China and India . This has increased demand for animal protein, which requires large amounts of grain.

But the rich world is exacerbating these effects by supporting the production of biofuels. The International Monetary Fund estimates that corn ethanol production in the United States accounted for at least half the rise in world corn demand in each of the past three years. This elevated corn prices. Feed prices rose. So did prices of other crops — mainly soybeans — as farmers switched their fields to corn, according to the Agriculture Department.

Washington provides a subsidy of 51 cents a gallon to ethanol blenders and slaps a tariff of 54 cents a gallon on imports. In the European Union, most countries exempt biofuels from some gas taxes and slap an average tariff equal to more than 70 cents a gallon of imported ethanol. There are several reasons to put an end to these interventions. At best, corn ethanol delivers only a small reduction in greenhouse gases compared with gasoline. And it could make things far worse if it leads to more farming in forests and grasslands. Rising food prices provide an urgent argument to nix ethanol’s supports.

Over the long term, agricultural productivity must increase in the developing world. Mr. Zoellick suggested rich countries could help finance a “green revolution” to increase farm productivity and raise crop yields in Africa . But the rise in food prices calls for developed nations to provide more immediate assistance. Last month, the World Food Program said rising grain costs blew a hole of more than $500 million in its budget for helping millions of victims of hunger around the world.

Industrial nations are not generous, unfortunately. Overseas aid by rich countries fell 8.4 percent last year from 2006. Developed nations would have to increase their aid budgets by 35 percent over the next three years just to meet the commitments they made in 2005.

They must not let this target slip. Continued growth of the middle class in China and India , the push for renewable fuels and anticipated damage to agricultural production caused by global warming mean that food prices are likely to stay high. Millions of people, mainly in developing countries, could need aid to avoid malnutrition. Rich countries’ energy policies helped create the problem. Now those countries should help solve it.

World food shortages to stay, riots a risk: FAO

April 9, 2008

by Mayank Bhardwaj

Reuters

NEW DELHI (Reuters) - Food riots which have struck several impoverished countries could spread with shortages and high prices set to continue for some time, the head of the United Nation's Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) said.

A combination of high oil and fuel prices, rising demand for food in a wealthier Asia, the use of farmland and crops for biofuels, bad weather and speculation on futures markets have pushed up food prices, prompting violent protests in a handful of poor states.

Jacques Diouf, director general of the Rome-based FAO, said on Wednesday during a trip to India that there was a growing risk of social instability in countries where families spent more than half their income on food.

"The problem is very serious around the world due to severe price rises and we have seen riots in Egypt , Cameroon , Haiti and Burkina Faso ," he told reporters in New Delhi .

Five people have been killed in a week of demonstrations in Haiti over high food prices in the poorest country in the Americas , while unions in the West African nation of Burkina Faso called a general strike over soaring food and fuel costs.

"There is a risk that this unrest will spread in countries where 50 to 60 percent of income goes to food," Diouf added.

He said world cereal stocks were enough to meet demand for eight to 12 weeks, while grain supplies were at their lowest since the 1980s.

"This is due to higher demand from countries like India , China , where GDP grows at 8-10 percent and the increase in income is going to food," Diouf said after meeting India 's farm minister, Sharad PawarHe said he was advising governments to invest in irrigation, storage facilities and rural infrastructure and increase productivity to meet the challenge of food scarcity.

PRICE SPIRAL

Global food prices, based on United Nations records, rose 35 percent in the year to the end of January, markedly accelerating an upturn that began, gently at first, in 2002.

Since then, prices have risen 65 percent. In 2007 alone, according to the FAO's world food index, dairy prices rose nearly 80 percent and grain 42 percent.

Some of the world's most populous countries have felt the impact of higher prices after rice joined a wider rally that has buoyed other grains like wheat and corn.

Rice prices in Thailand , the world's biggest rice exporter, have doubled since the start of this year after India heavily restricted and then banned the export of non-basmati rice to ensure it had enough to feed its people.

In Manila , President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo unveiled a series of measures to boost rice production as troops armed with M-16 rifles supervised the sale of subsidized grain and the government threatened to jail hoarders for life.

Pakistan recently deployed security personnel to guard its warehouses.

The FAO in a recent report said Burkina Faso , Cameroon , Egypt , Indonesia , Ivory Coast , Mauritania , Mozambique and Senegal have seen unrest in the last several weeks related to food and fuel prices

In India , wholesale price inflation hit its highest in more than three years in March at 7 percent, posing a headache for the ruling coalition in Asia 's third-largest economy with elections for local and national assemblies creeping up.

Price pressures had been building for several weeks, in large part driven by foodstuffs, and the government has stepped in with a string of duty cuts and export restrictions.

Analysts say fiscal steps were unlikely to roll back prices, and Indian leaders have said ensuring food security by boosting domestic production was a priority.

"I welcome economic growth in India and China , but I also hope they will invest in agriculture because these two countries account for 2.2 billion people out of 6 billion," Diouf said.

(Writing by Himangshu Watts; Editing by Mark Williams and Jerry Norton)

Bush, Thine Eye is Everywhere!

Google has lots to do with intelligence

March 30, 2008

by Verne Kopytoff

San Francisco Chronicle

When the nation's intelligence agencies wanted a computer network to better share information about everything from al Qaeda to North Korea , they turned to a big name in the technology industry to supply some of the equipment: Google Inc.

The Mountain View company sold the agencies servers for searching documents, marking a small victory for the company and its little-known effort to do business with the government.

"We are a very small group, and even a lot of people in the federal government don't know that we exist," said Mike Bradshaw, who leads Google's federal government sales team and its 18 employees.

The strategy is part of a broader plan at Google to expand beyond its consumer roots. Federal, state and local agencies, along with corporations and schools, are increasingly seen by the company as lucrative sources of extra revenue.

In addition to the intelligence agencies, Google's government customers include the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration, the U.S. Coast Guard, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, the state of Alabama and Washington , D.C.

Many of the contracts are for search appliances - servers for storing and searching internal documents. Agencies can use the devices to create their own mini-Googles on intranets made up entirely of government data.

Additionally, Google has had success licensing a souped-up version of its aerial mapping service, Google Earth. Agencies can use it to plot scientific data and chart the U.S. coastline, for example, giving ships another tool to navigate safely.

Spy agencies are using Google equipment as the backbone of Intellipedia, a network aimed at helping agents share intelligence. Rather than hoarding information, spies and analysts are being encouraged to post what they learn on a secure online forum where colleagues can read it and add comments.

"Each analyst, for lack of a better term, has a shoe box with their knowledge," said Sean Dennehy, chief of Intellipedia development for the CIA. "They maintained it in a shared drive or a Word document, but we're encouraging them to move those platforms so that everyone can benefit."

Like Wikipedia

The system is modeled after Wikipedia, the public online, group-edited encyclopedia. However, the cloak-and-dagger version is maintained by the director of national intelligence and is accessible only to the CIA, FBI, National Security Agency and an alphabet soup of other intelligence agencies and offices.

Agents can log in, depending on their clearance, to Intellipedia's three tiers of service: top secret, secret and sensitive but unclassified. So far, 37,000 users have established accounts on the network, which contain 35,000 articles encompassing 200,000 pages, according to Dennehy.

Google supplies the computer servers that support the network, as well as the search software that allows users to sift through messages and data.

Dennehy declined to asses the quality of Google's products, but he applauded the contribution that Intellipedia can make to the government's work. Whether the network actually leads to better intelligence will largely depend on agents sharing some of their most important files and then their colleagues chiming in with incisive commentary - issues that are out of Google's hands.

Normally, Google ranks results on its consumer site by using the number of links to a Web page as a barometer of its importance. Doing so on Intellipedia isn't as effective because the service lies behind a firewall and is used by a limited number of people.

Instead, material gets more prominent placement if it is tagged, or appended by the network's users, with descriptive keywords.

Because of the complexities of doing business with the government, Google uses resellers to process orders on its behalf. Google takes care of the sales, marketing and management of the accounts.

Conspiracy theories

Google is one of many technology vendors vying for government contracts.

A single deal can be sizable, such as the one Google made with the National Security Agency, which paid more than $2 million for four search appliances plus a support agreement, according to a contract obtained through a Freedom of Information Act request.

However, the amount is insignificant when measured against Google's overall revenue of $16.6 billion last year, virtually all of which came from online advertising.

On occasion, Google is the target of conspiracy theories from bloggers who say it is working with spy agencies more closely than simply selling search equipment.

The buzz got so loud two years ago that Matt Cutts, who leads Google's fight against spam Web sites, responded by ridiculing the idea in his personal blog.

Google's Bradshaw emphasized that the company sells virtually the same products to companies as it does to government agencies. Google can make minor tweaks to comply with government rules about equipment security, for example, while major customization is handled by others.

"There were some wild accusations," Bradshaw said. "But everything we do with the government is the same as what we do with our corporate customers."

Former Bush Administration Lawyer Asked to Testify Before Congress

April 9, 2008

by Elana Schor

The Guardian/UK

The Bush administration lawyer who provided a legal basis for the brutal interrogation tactics used by the US military and CIA was called to account today by congressional Democrats.

John Yoo, now a law professor at the University of California , was asked to appear before the judiciary committee in the House of Representatives on May 6 to discuss the legal grounds for the harsh treatment of al-Qaida suspects.

“The judiciary committee will look at the legal basis for actions taken before and during the war and whether we need to write stronger laws to prevent a future imperial presidency from steamrolling Congress and the American people,” the Democratic congressman who chairs the panel, John Conyers, said.

Yoo previously told Conyers’ aides he was reluctant to testify publicly about the legal briefs he wrote for the Bush administration, the congressman said in a letter to his prospective witness.

But Conyers reminded Yoo that he has already given an extensive on-record interview to Esquire magazine for a profile to be published next month.

“Overall you have made such extensive public comments on these and related matters, it is difficult to understand why you would continue to decline to present your views to the committee,” Conyers wrote to Yoo.

Yoo left the office of legal counsel, where he gave legal advice to the Bush administration, in 2003. Earlier that year, he drafted an 81-page memo giving the Pentagon extensive leeway to harm detainees during interrogations without fear of legal consequences.

That memo, which the administration later revoked, was made public for the first time last week and caused a stir among liberals in Congress.

In one section, for example, Yoo said US interrogators could maim detainees without fear of prosecution, depending on the body part that was injured and whether intent to harm existed.

“Just because the statute says — that doesn’t mean you have to do it,” Yoo told Esquire last week. “You’re right, there’s still the moral question — after you’ve answered the legal question — whether you should do it at all.”

SECRECY NEWS

from the FAS Project on Government Secrecy

Volume 2008, Issue No. 36

April 10, 2008

U.S. INTELLIGENCE AGENCIES RETHINK CLASSIFICATION POLICY

U.S. intelligence agencies have embarked upon a process to develop a uniform classification policy and a single classification guide that could be used by the entire U.S. intelligence community, according to a newly obtained report from the Office of the Director of National Intelligence.

The way that intelligence agencies classify information is not only frustrating to outsiders, as it is intended to be, but it has also impeded interagency cooperation and degraded agency performance.

In order to promote improved information sharing and intelligence community integration, the ODNI undertook a review of classification policies as a prelude towards establishing a new Intelligence Community Classification Guide that would replace numerous individual agency classification policy guides.

The initial ODNI review, completed in January 2008, identified fundamental defects in current intelligence classification policy.

"The definitions of 'national security' and what constitutes 'intelligence' -- and thus what must be classified -- are unclear," the review team found.

"Many interpretations exist concerning what constitutes harm or the degree of harm that might result from improper disclosure of the information, often leading to inconsistent or contradictory guidelines from different agencies."

"There appears to be no common understanding of classification levels among the classification guides reviewed by the team, nor any consistent guidance as to what constitutes 'damage,' 'serious damage,'

or 'exceptionally grave damage' to national security... There is wide variance in application of classification levels."

Among the recommendations presented in the initial review were that original classification authorities should specify clearly the basis for classifying information, e.g. whether the sensitivity derives from

the content of the information, or the source of the information, or the method by which it is analyzed, the date or location it was acquired, etc. Current policy requires that the classifier be "able" to describe the basis for classification but not that he or she in fact do so.

A copy of the unreleased ODNI report on classification policy was obtained by Secrecy News.

See "Intelligence Community Classification Guidance: Findings and Recommendations Report," January 2008:

http://www.fas.org/sgp/othergov/intel/class.pdf

From Secrecy News' perspective, the initial ODNI review falls short in two respects.

First, it assumes that consistency in classification is intrinsically desirable and should therefore be imposed by a community-wide classification guide. But consistency is at most a secondary virtue. When a classification policy is poorly justified, it is preferable for it to be inconsistently applied, as in the case of intelligence budget secrecy (see below).

Second, the review does not touch upon what is probably the single most necessary change in intelligence classification policy, namely the need to narrow the definition of intelligence sources and methods that require protection. Almost anything can serve as an intelligence source or method, including a subscription to the daily newspaper. But not every intelligence source or method requires or deserves classification or other protection from disclosure.

STATE DEPARTMENT REVEALS 2009 INTELLIGENCE BUDGET REQUEST

The U.S. State Department's Bureau of Intelligence and Research (INR) is among the most highly regarded members of the U.S. Intelligence Community. Not coincidentally, it is also among the most open and accessible.

In particular, it is one of the only Intelligence Community organizations that regularly publishes its budget. (The FBI also discloses much of its intelligence spending.)

Thus, the recent 2009 State Department budget justification book projects a 2009 INR budget of $59.8 million for a staff of 313 persons. The ten-page 2009 budget justification for INR may be found here:

http://www.fas.org/irp/agency/inr/fy2009just.pdf

This would be unremarkable except for the fact that INR's budget disclosure policy deviates from the norm of U.S. intelligence classification policy, in which most budget information is automatically classified. Even some intelligence organizations that are smaller and less influential than INR insist on classifying their budgets.

For more than a decade, the Department of Energy Office of Intelligence published its detailed budget each year. But under pressure from CIA (so I was told), DOE began withholding its intelligence budget information in 2004. The last reported figure for DOE intelligence was $39.8 million in FY 2004 (Secrecy News, 02/07/05 ).

If consistency in classification policy were to prevail throughout the U.S. intelligence community, as the Director of National Intelligence has recommended, then State Department intelligence might be expected to follow DOE intelligence into pointless, unnecessary secrecy.

CORRECTION ON COLLAPSE OF BEE COLONIES

A Science Daily story on the causes of the declining honey bee population that was cited yesterday in Secrecy News was from April 2007, not April 2008. Though interesting, it was not news.

The Coming Death of the Hedge Funds

March 31, 2008

by- Joseph Checkler

The Wall Street Journal(:

" New York activist hedge fund Pardus Capital Management LP is halting investor redemptions indefinitely at a time when many of its holdings are plummeting in value… Pardus, which doesn’t use leverage, is down 40% from its high-water mark in early 2007, said a person with knowledge… ‘The actions we have taken will allow us to protect the funds and their investors from the external short-term pressure of the broader financial markets and focus on realizing value on our portfolio companies for investors over an extended period of time,’ Pardus said."

April 1, 2008

by Tom Cahill and Katherine Burton

Bloomberg

"Stock hedge funds, unsure about which direction the markets would move, sat on a record amount of cash as the industry headed for its biggest quarterly decline in almost six years. Equity managers, who oversee about one-third of the $1.9 trillion in hedge funds, held an estimated $90 billion of cash in January, a hoard that dropped to $64.8 billion the next month, according to data compiled by Merrill Lynch analyst Mary Ann Bartels."

April 3, 2008

by James Mackintosh

Financial Times

“Hedge funds are still reeling after banks unexpectedly pulled credit lines and demanded more security against loans, forcing firesales and heavy losses. Now they face a new threat: investors are abandoning them, raising the risk that the funds will have to sell assets at any price to raise the cash to meet withdrawals. So far redemptions are mainly in out-of-favour sectors such as credit funds, small-cap specialists and event-driven funds, which include activists, along with poor performers unexpectedly hurt by the credit squeeze. But a series of big funds have already been forced to react, restricting withdrawals or restructuring, and more are thought to be considering changes. ‘There are two ways you get squeezed running a hedge fund,’ says one large investor in the industry. ‘One is that you can’t get finance from your prime broker. The other is that the clients take their money away and you can’t get enough liquidity [cash] to meet the redemptions.’"

Comment: Most hedge funds are Ponze schemes. If an investor reads this and doubts it, try and get your money out. If the fund agrees at once, don’t worry but probably (and this is more prevalent now) the investor will get all kinds of weasel-worded paper which will boil down to a refusal. They can’t give back what isn’t there, can they? BH

In U.S. , Metal Theft Plagues Troubled Neighborhoods

April 8, 2008

by Christopher Maag

New York Times

CLEVELAND — Metal scrappers have attacked churches and ransacked homes in this Midwestern city, leaving entire neighborhoods uninhabitable.

Saint Theodosius Orthodox Cathedral here lost its insurance after a thief stole copper panels from the roof years ago. Three churches in Cleveland Heights have been stripped of copper gutters. And in the last few months, three churches in the North Collinwood neighborhood were stripped of copper downspouts.

“Our neighborhoods are being pillaged, not by Vikings or Goths, but by modern-day barbarians,” said Mike Polensek, North Collinwood ’s City Council member. Even manhole covers and sewer drains are being stolen out of streets to be sold as scrap metal, Mr. Polensek said.

Houses, however, are the greatest targets of commodity scavengers in the United States . Neighborhoods depopulated by the rising tide of foreclosures make easy targets.

So many houses have been stripped of siding and copper pipes that neighborhoods must be abandoned and turned into green spaces, said Jim Rokakis, treasurer for Cuyahoga County , which includes Cleveland . “We have to pull out,” he said. “There’s nothing left.”

It is common for home builders and remodelers here to erect signs on plywood that read “All PVC pipes, no copper,” indicating a house has less expensive plastic piping.

In the last six months, the police in the city of Cleveland Heights have arrested two groups of scrappers who used government foreclosure lists to plot which houses to sack.

Scrap metal thefts began to soar 12 to 18 months ago. “There’s a direct correlation between the price of commodities and the number of metal thefts,” said Bruce Savage, spokesman for the Institute of Scrap Recycling Industries .

The institute received 174 reports from the police around the country regarding metal thefts from Jan. 1 to March 28 of this year, a sharp increase over the period in 2007, and the actual number of thefts is much higher, Mr. Savage said.

Copper pipes, among the most commonly stolen items, are selling for just over $3 a pound. The local police report bronze urns taken from gravestones and long sections of aluminum bleachers stolen from high school stadiums.

Catalytic converters in vehicles are also popular targets because they contain platinum, which this month sold for an average of $1,900 an ounce.

US mortgage crisis to cost  $945 billion worldwide: IMF

April 8, 2008

AFP

WASHINGTON (AFP) - - The International Monetary Fund said Tuesday the worldwide losses stemming from the US subprime mortgage crisis could hit 945 billion dollars as the impact spreads in the global economy.

The IMF, in a particularly stark report, said that falling US housing prices and rising delinquencies on the residential mortgage market could lead to losses of 565 billion dollars.

That, combined with other categories of loans originated and securities issued in the United States related to commercial real estate, the consumer credit market and corporations "increases aggregate potential losses to about 945 billion dollars," it said.

"The crisis is spreading beyond the US subprime market -- namely to the prime residential and commercial real estate markets, consumer credit, and the low- to high-grade corporate credit markets," the IMF said in releasing its semiannual Global Financial Stability Report.

While the US remains the epicenter, "financial institutions in other countries have also been affected, reflecting the same overly benign global financial conditions and to varying degrees -- weaknesses in risk management systems and prudential supervision."

It was the first time the multilateral institution has made an official estimate of the global losses suffered by banks and other financial institutions in the credit squeeze that began eight months ago in the United States , amid rising defaults on subprime, or high-risk, home loans.

The staggering 945 billion dollar estimate of losses, made in March, represents roughly 142 dollars per person worldwide and represents four percent of the 23.21-trillion-dollar credit market.

The IMF said that global banks likely will shoulder about half of the losses -- at 440 billion to 510 billion dollars.

Last month, ratings agency Standard & Poor's estimated global banking firms would likely write off 285 billion dollars in various securities linked to US subprime real estate, with more than half the losses already recognized. Some analysts have put the figure higher for the subprime market and related losses.

"Leading indicators point to a tightening of credit conditions across many economic activities," Jaime Caruana, head of the IMF's Monetary and Capital Markets Department, said at a news conference.

Caruana said the losses "suggest a potentially large impact on US economic growth," and that Europe may also see tightening conditions and slowing credit growth under the global financial strain.

The IMF releases its biannual World Economic Outlook on Wednesday and already has said it would slash a half percentage point off its forecast of 2008 global economic growth, to 3.7 percent.

The Global Financial Stability Report cautioned that loss estimates were imperfect and could go higher.

The unusually precise and harsh report comes ahead of the IMF and the World Bank spring meetings Saturday and Sunday in Washington .

The IMF, whose core mission is to promote global financial stability, said there was "a collective failure to appreciate the extent of leverage taken on by a wide range of institutions -- banks, monoline insurers, government-sponsored entities, hedge funds -- and the associated risks of a disorderly unwinding.

"It is now clear that the current turmoil is more than simply a liquidity event, reflecting deep-seated balance sheet fragilities and weak capital bases, which means its effects are likely to be broader, deeper, and more protracted," it said.

The report criticizes the "excessive risk-taking" and "weak underwriting" undertaken by under-capitalized institutions.

The IMF recommended a range of measures to address issues raised by the crisis, including better coordination between central banks, improved transparency from financial institutions and reform of ratings systems.