U.S. Intelligence... shortly before 9/11

U.S. Intelligence... shortly before 9/11

It is 2000... “National Intelligence Council predicted 2015.…a world in which power is diffusing and decaying—

“There's financial volatility; anonymous cyberattacks; widening economic divisions; an increasingly assertive China; a WMD (weapons of mass destruction); growing illegal migration; a mercurial, authoritarian Russia; social unrest, religious and ideological extremism, and terrorism, and shaped by the destabilizing impact of new technology and the allure of political Islam; Iraq acquiring nuclear weapons; Japan losing its position as the world's third-largest economy; the emergence of an "international terrorist coalition with diverse anti-Western objectives and access to WMD; globalization, and attendant technological advances, would also shatter the very nature of power. The world is on the brink of a new era that may resemble the script of a James Bond film, in which international affairs are increasingly determined by large and powerful organisations rather than governments.

" The Cold War, artificially, managed to organize almost every regional conflict in the world into a global system of conflict, which was managed at the top by two states that had an overarching interest in avoiding instability that could drag them into a very dangerous confrontation. After it ended, many of the states of the old Soviet empire began to collapse, accelerating crime, lawlessness, tribal violence and terrorism.

“Moisés Naím wrote in The Atlantic this summer, {disguising soldiers as civilians and recruiting civilian insurgents are old practices. But in the twenty-first century, they've acquired unprecedented potential as tools of war}. Back in 2000, U.S. intelligence officials glimpsed this phenomenon. Heading into 2015, it's right before our eyes….”



I created a painting on this theme. But that was in 1984 and I was feeling the pressures of this future global reality. I called it “STREETS”, as that would be where the war would happen. Yet, while we tramp into time, our ignorance and apathy continues, as depicted in the scenarios within the painting.

The painting was what I might call my Guernica, using a few Picasso graphic techniques, as I searched for my own brand as an artist.

                                          
                                         Streets



             Selamat Tinggal                           Rod                             rod_malay@hotmail.com