Month: December 2009

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Journal: Anthropology 101–Not Being Listened To

Collaboration Zones, Communities of Practice, Ethics, Key Players, Policies, Threats
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To Beat Al Qaeda, Look to the East

By SCOTT ATRAN   December 13, 2009

Scott Atran, an anthropologist at the National Center for Scientific Research in Paris, John Jay College and the University of Michigan, is the author of the forthcoming ‘Listen to the Devil.'

Confidence is important, but we also have to recognize that the decision to commit 30,000 more troops to a counterinsurgency effort against a good segment of the Afghan population, with the focus on converting a deeply unpopular and corrupt regime into a unified, centralized state for the first time in that country's history, is far from a slam dunk. In the worst case, the surge may push General McChrystal's ”core goal of defeating Al Qaeda” further away.

What binds these groups together? First is friendship forged through fighting: the Indonesian volunteers who fought the Soviet Union in Afghanistan styled themselves the Afghan Alumni, and many kept in contact when they returned home after the war. The second is school ties and discipleship: many leading operatives in Southeast Asia come from a handful of religious schools affiliated with Jemaah Islamiyah. Out of some 30,000 religious schools in Indonesia, only about 50 have a deadly legacy of producing violent extremists. Third is family ties; as anyone who has watched the opening scene from ”The Godfather” knows, weddings can be terrific opportunities for networking and plotting.

Understanding these three aspects of terrorist networking has given law enforcement a leg up on the jihadists.

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Journal: Cyber-Security Etc. & Multinational Engagement

Uncategorized

As attacks increase, U.S. struggles to recruit computer security experts

Hackers break Amazon's Kindle DRM–The great ebook ‘unswindle'

Peace, Justice and the Lord's Resistance Army

Weapons-carrying plane headed for Sri Lanka

Phi Beta Iota: It has finally come to pass.  Cyber-security–like the Black Plague before it–and of course the ten high-level threats to humanity so ably identified by the High Level Panel on Threats, Challenges, and Change–is a modern demonstration of three irrefutable facts of life:

1.  The US does not know what it needs to know and is incapable of fielding a cyber-security cadre.

2.  Multinational Engagement is the ONLY possible, reasonable, affordable solution for what ails the Whole Earth.

3.  The 21st Century is the Century of unfathomable complexity, when our blissful ignorance of that complexity is just sufficiently lifted so that we realize that we are NOT an adaptive complex society; that our Industrial Era top down command and control based on secrets and unilateral uninformed and often corrupt decision-making is pathologically inept, and that new means, ways, and ends must be found.

Multinational Engagement is NOT about false promises, lip service, tokenism, or blustering treaties and theatrical agreements.  It is about deep open collaboration in eradicating every threat by harmonizing planning, programming, budgeting, and behavior (PPBB) across all twelve policies, so as to enable the eight demographic powers to create a prosperous world at peace despite over 400 years of Western imperialism and coddling of “friendly” dictators.

On background (DVD), as we write this, Gandhi has just been sentenced to jail for non-cooperation with the British government occupying India and now non-violent multi-faith–Hindu and Muslim– citizens of India are marching five by five in an endless number, exhausting the paucity of stick-wielding Vichy Indians.

Journal: Cyber-Security or Cyber-Scam? Plus Short List of Links to Reviews and Books on Hacking 101

Reference: Are Hackers Pioneers with the Right Stuff or Criminal Pathological Scum? Mitch Kabay Reprises

Additional References:


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Journal: Legalizing Insurance Theft–Health Care Scam

07 Health
Chuck Spinney

I got this from a friend who works on budget issues in Congress, and he/she assured me the reasons are accurate — that is all I know, but if true, this list would explain why insurance stock just rose to all time highs.

Top 10 Reasons to Kill Senate Health Care Bill

  1. 1.  Forces you to pay up to 8% of your income to private insurance corporations — whether you want to or not.
  2. If you refuse to buy the insurance, you'll have to pay penalties of up to 2% of your annual income to the IRS.
  3. Many will be forced to buy poor-quality insurance they can't afford to use, with $11,900 in annual out-of-pocket expenses over and above their annual premiums.
  4. Massive restriction on a woman's right to choose, designed to trigger a challenge to Roe v. Wade in the Supreme Court.
  5. Paid for by taxes on the middle class insurance plan you have right now through your employer, causing them to cut back benefits and increase co-pays.
  6. Many of the taxes to pay for the bill start now, but most Americans won't see any benefits — like an end to discrimination against those with preexisting conditions — until 2014 when the program begins.
  7. Allows insurance companies to charge people who are older 300% more than others.
  8. Grants monopolies to drug companies that will keep generic versions of expensive biotech drugs from ever coming to market.
  9. No re-importation of prescription drugs, which would save consumers $100 billion over 10 years.
  10. The cost of medical care will continue to rise, and insurance premiums for a family of four will rise an average of $1,000 a year — meaning in 10 years, your family's insurance premium will be $10,000 more annually than it is right now.

Background information on each point:

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Journal: TSA Clears Illegal Immigrants To Work At NY Airport–Accepts False ID’s, Grants “Trusted Agent” Full Access

10 Security, Cultural Intelligence, Government

Full Story Online

In the latest of many shameful lapses, the federal agency in charge of securing the nation’s transportation system approved background checks for a dozen illegal immigrants working in sensitive areas of a busy U.S. airport.

The illegal aliens, from Central America and Mexico, worked in operational areas of Stewart International Airport, a 2,400-acre facility located about 60 miles north of New York City. Stewart is a major passenger airport for the state’s mid-Hudson region that also handles large quantities of cargo and serves as a military field.

The illegal aliens all had security badges approved by the Transportation Security Administration (TSA), the agency created after the 2001 terrorist attacks mainly to protect airlines. The TSA’s national background check failed to detect the fake Social Security numbers and other bogus documents provided by the illegal immigrants to obtain clearance.

So the embattled 43,000-member Homeland Security agency, which has received hundreds of millions of dollars from Congress to fulfill its mission, granted the undocumented aliens “trusted agent” security badges.
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Journal: ClimateGate 22 December 2009 Evening

Earth Intelligence
ClimateGate Rolling Update

Carbon Trading Scam In Big Trouble After Copenhagen Failure

Green billionaires take a hit as markets nosedive

Green Scam Rocked Slightly

Global warming con men hoping to bag windfall profits from the climate change scam are wincing today after carbon trading markets nose dived following the failure at Copenhagen to secure legally binding targets on restricting CO2 emissions.

Green energy scheme ‘a fraud'

As criticism of the emissions trading scheme grows bolder after the fractured Copenhagen summit, AGL has labelled the administration of the the renewable energy target a fraud.

Climate change conference collapses

Mired in a struggle for money and power, the 2009 Copenhagen Climate Conference collapsed under the weight of its own greed without a substantive agreement. The multi nation participants left the gathering generally unfulfilled and lacking the commitments for additional revenue that had been sought by the poorer countries.

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Review (Guest): Integrity–Good People, Bad Choices, and Life Lessons from the White House

5 Star, Biography & Memoirs, Consciousness & Social IQ, Corruption, Crime (Government), Executive (Partisan Failure, Reform), Justice (Failure, Reform), Politics, Power (Pathologies & Utilization)
Amazon Page

REVIEW BY  Russell J. Geoffrey (East Greenwich, RI)

14 of 14 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars INTEGRITY: easy to lose, hard to restore

February 4, 2008

He was a Navy officer serving on the USS Yorktown by the age of 22, in law school at 26, a staff assistant to the counsel to the president at 29, and Undersecretary of Transportation at 33. At 34, he was in jail. How could this happen to a man raised in a highly moral family, with an excellent education, with Christian Middle American values and a strong sense of patriotism? Yet here was Egil “Bud” Krogh at 33, starting a prison sentence for violating the civil rights of Dr. Lewis Fielding, a California psychiatrist. Bud says the principal cause was the collapse of integrity of those members of the White House's Special Investigative Unit (SIU) who conspired, ordered and carried the break-in of the doctor who had been consulted by Dr. Daniel Ellsburg, the “leaker” of the Pentagon Papers” to the New York Times in early 1971.

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Event: 27-28 Jan 2010 London UK CyberWarfare 2010

Uncategorized

Conference Details

Key highlights for the Cyber Warfare 2010 programme include:

  • Insights into the evolving cyber threats to national security and information systems and evaluation of solutions to mitigate the threat from international military cyber commands
  • Analysis of current and future legal issues political pressures and challenges surrounding Cyber Warfare attacks and appropriate national cyber space activity
  • Evolving national policy and doctrinal updates of Cyber Security and Cyber warfare from the UK MoD, US DoD, Swiss MoD, Italian MoD and Danish MoD
  • Examination and lessons learnt from cyber attacks with insights from NATO studies and Estonian MoD
  • Latest technology updates in cyberspace and current research and development for both Computer Network Defence and Computer Network Attack
noble gold