Category: Peace Intelligence

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Worth a Look: iPhone First Aid Application

Peace Intelligence

Haiti: Man Says iPhone Helped Him Treat His Wounds While Trapped In Rubble

This story's been getting a lot of attention in recent hours. Here's how Wired magazine begins its version of a tale about modern technology coming through in a crisis

Message From Dan:

“Consulted this app, while trapped under Hotel Montana in Haiti earthquake, to treat excessive bleeding and shock. Help me stay alive till I was rescued 64 hours later. God saved me, and this app was one of the tools He gave me.”

The app is Pocket First Aid & CPR from Jive Media. I checked with Jive founder Doug Kent about it, and he e-mailed that “all of the content is loaded upon installation, including the videos and illustrations. Internet access is not needed to access any of the features.”

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Journal: Haiti Update 21 January 2010 PM

Peace Intelligence

Haiti: The View From Here

Everyone's seen the gruesome images on the news, and I guess I could try to get creative and come up with some string of awful words to describe the state and conditions of the city and its people, which would not suffice, so there's really only one way to describe it: fucked. It's completely, unbelievably fucked. The whole country is outdoors.

Every block — collapsed buildings, every street — refugees, every gas station crammed with people shouting and jockeying to fill up makeshift gas cans. And yes, the fallen bodies with faces covered with rags or cardboard, everywhere. It doesn't end.

It's day five, people are getting more and more desperate, and the vast scale of the tragedy is unimaginable: today, food was personally distributed to 200,000 people out of more than a million who have been affected and in need.

Phi Beta Iota: The best estimate available from published sources is that no more than one fifth of the population is getting water and food on any given day.  This would be a good time to re-visit air drops of water, food, plastic sheeting and cord as well as lumber–spreading the drops will spread the population and reduce density in the city.  IOHO.

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Journal: Al Qaeda, Yemen, Somalia, and USG

08 Wild Cards, Cultural Intelligence, Government, Law Enforcement, Military, Peace Intelligence
Berto Jongman Recommends...

Welcome to Qaedastan: Yemen's coming explosion will make today's problems seem tame.

Full Story Online

Yemen has so many dire problems that it's easy to be overwhelmed. Al Qaeda is growing in prominence, a Shiite rebellion is expanding in the north, and the threat of secession is renewed in the south. There's a brewing fight over what comes after President Ali Abdullah Saleh, age 67, who has ruled Yemen for 31 years; the country's elites are locked in a closed-door struggle to take power once he departs. Finally, and perhaps most intractably, Yemen is an environmental and resource catastrophe in the making. The country's water table is nearly depleted from years of agricultural malpractice, and its oil reserves are rapidly dwindling. This comes just when unemployment is soaring and an explosive birthrate promises only more young, jobless citizens in the coming years.

Testimony of Gregory D. Johnson, PhD Candidate, Near Eastern Studies, Princeton University, Before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee January 20, 2010

Too many problems of too severe a nature to be dealth with in isolation from one another.  “Yemen and its challenges have to be understood and dealt with as a whole.”

AQAP in Yemen and the Christmas Day Terrorist Attack  By Gregory D. Johnsen

Al Qaeda in Yemen and Somalia: A Ticking Time Bomb: Report to the Committee on Foreign Relations, United States Senate, January 21, 2010

Standard party line “prep” for invading both countries.  Most interesting tid-bit: 36 American convicts reached Yemen, ostensibly to study Arabic.  Given the number of convicts the USA produces, most jailed for marijuana possession, and in combination with the bankruptcy of the USA and the meltdown of its social and physical infrastructure, we read this in a much more catastrophic homeland manner than might be the case in the cozy ambiance of Capitol Hill.  Al Qaeda is no longer the center of gravity–domestic anger easily converted into violence is the center of gravity.

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Reference: BGen McMaster at ODNI on Afghanistan

04 Inter-State Conflict, 05 Civil War, 08 Wild Cards, Director of National Intelligence et al (IC), DoD, Government, Memoranda, Military, Non-Governmental, Peace Intelligence

Memo corrected to remove (Ret).  BGen McMaster was promoted to his present rank on 29 June 2009 after being twice passed over (2006, 2007), presumably for having the integrity to be outspoken.  He is the author of the widely-admired book Dereliction of Duty: Johnson, McNamara, the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and the Lies That Led to Vietnam.

Nine key factors are examined by BGen McMaster in his talk to the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI).  Answers question on why we were so unprepared.  Final paragraph of trip report:

Can’t get much from a database and IT networks, but contractors keep pushing and we keep buying.   But what really need is experts from anywhere, context, and also need to ask the soldiers!  Make Phebe Marr a general!  Also pay attention to: Charles Tripp, R. Kadeiri, Sarah Chayes, Barnett R. Rubin and Ahmed Rashid, Michael Howard, Frontline piece on Children of the Taliban, Fariad Ali Han on borders.  Educate analysts (and self-educate) on the place, don’t waste time training them on the process.

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Journal: Guantanamo “Suicides”–Shamed Again

08 Wild Cards, 09 Justice, 09 Terrorism, 10 Security, Collective Intelligence, Cultural Intelligence, Ethics, Government, Methods & Process, Military, Peace Intelligence

Marcus Aurelius

Murder and Cover-Up

The Guantánamo Suicides

By STEPHEN SOLDZ

My friends who served in the military speak of the pride with they performed what  they viewed as their duty. This duty included the obligation to act with honor, including, above all, following the Geneva Conventions when handling detainees and prisoners of war. My friends tell sadly of the despair they felt in seeing this obligation shredded during the Bush administration as word came down that they should do “whatever it takes.”  Some of them resigned in disgust. Others resisted what they viewed as moral decay from within.

A new story by attorney Scott Horton at Harpers reveals yet another very disturbing episode of dishonor. Horton reveals strong credible evidence that three alleged “suicides” at Guantanamo in June 2006 were really homicides. The official story is that during the night of  June 9, 2006, three prisoners were found hanging in their cells in Alpha Block of Guantanamo's Camp 1.

– – – – – –

Stephen Soldz is a psychoanalyst, psychologist, public health researcher, and faculty member at the Boston Graduate School of Psychoanalysis. He edits the Psyche, Science, and Society blog. He is a founder of the Coalition for an Ethical Psychology, one of the organizations working to change American Psychological Association policy on participation in abusive interrogations. He is President-Elect of Psychologists for Social Responsibility [PsySR].

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Reference: Reverse TPFID for Haiti

Communities of Practice, Peace Intelligence

TPFID (Time-Phased Force and Deployment Data)

Reverse TPFID Sequence of Events:

CAB 21 Sequence of Events as Previously Provided

Embrace the Cubans as full partners

Multinational Decision Support Center (MDSC) in Tampa or Quantico

Grid the Island, Assign Zone Masters with Commercial Satellite Communications to Each Grid Square

Execute Bottom-Up Needs-Driven Information-Driven Relief Effort as well as Med-Evac Priority

Emphasize AIR DROPS not WHEELS, and C-13os using See Bee rough strips created overnight

Assume all local water contaminated by bodies and sewage until demonstrated otherwise

Hospital Ship Should Have Been Turned Around Instantly, Refueled and Resupplied at Sea

Send at least one and ideally two Amphibious Ships will full complements of helos augmented as they pass Camp Lejeune coming down from Little Creek–ideally plan to use Landing Craft not just the helos

Pre-Approved Emergency Flights ONLY into Port a Prince and Santo Domingo (including See Bees and their construction equipment, Army engineers and bridges

Create at least two Foreward Area Refueling Points (FARP), one for conventional aircraft, one for helicopters, and add a third for free fuel for all ground vehicles including indigenous and NGO vehicles

Triage all relief aircraft via MDSC, ideally triage the loads BEFORE they are loaded–push the information perimeter all the way out to every government and NGO planning to arrive, run BIG AIR into McDill, Guantanamo, Havana, Bermuda, Miami, triage loads into C-130, Air Drop, and Helo Delivery.  Remember that onward transport is the next log-jam, see USMC Lessons Learned from Bangladesh–precision drops across the country are better than jamming everything into an airport without onward delivery options.

Re-Visit the 450-Ship Navy proposed in 1998 and again in 2008

Why is it we are not seeing Army Civil Affairs Brigade in charge of this?  Frock the ranking Colonel to one-star (pull him out of AF for this), put the Total Force behind CAB, and tell the existing conventional leadership they are in direct support of CAB.

Haiti is an Epoch B information challenge that cannot be addressed properly by Epoch A “materials” leadership.

See also:  Journal: Haiti Rolling Update

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Worth a Look: InSTEDD Emergency Support to Emergencies, Diseases, and Disasters

Gift Intelligence, Peace Intelligence, Worth A Look

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Our Mission

InSTEDD's mission is to harness the power of technology to improve collaboration for global health and humanitarian action. We are an innovation lab for tools designed to strengthen networks, build community resilience and improve early detection and response to major health-related events and natural or human-caused disasters. We grapple daily with the challenges of finding new approaches and new designs:  a simple, reliable way to bring it all together — the people, the tools and the data — and create the kinds of information flow that we know will save lives.  We think that with new, free and open-source technologies we can help humanitarian and public health organizations around the world work together more effectively in crises. We aim to reduce mortality, accelerate recovery and help prepare communities to face the unexpected with confidence in their own resilience.