July 2010 – Page 3 – Public Intelligence Blog

2010/07/292010/07/29

Review: Shooting the Truth–The Rise of American Political Documentaries

6 Star Top 10%, 9-11 Truth Books & DVDs, America (Founders, Current Situation), Atlases & State of the World, Atrocities & Genocide, Banks, Fed, Money, & Concentrated Wealth, Capitalism (Good & Bad), Censorship & Denial of Access, Communications, Consciousness & Social IQ, Corruption, Culture, DVD - Light, Culture, Research, Democracy, Economics, Education (General), Empire, Sorrows, Hubris, Blowback, History, Impeachment & Treason, Information Society, Iraq, Justice (Failure, Reform), Media, Military & Pentagon Power, Misinformation & Propaganda, Peace, Poverty, & Middle Class, Power (Pathologies & Utilization), Secrecy & Politics of Secrecy, Threats (Emerging & Perennial), Values, Ethics, Sustainable Evolution, Voices Lost (Indigenous, Gender, Poor, Marginalized), War & Face of Battle

Both a Tour of Substance, and an Eye Opener for Book People

July 29, 2010

James McEnteer

This is a 6 Star and Beyond book and is so categorized at Phi Beta Iota, the Public Intelligence Blog, where one can browse all 1600+ of my non-fiction reviews sorted into 98 categories and easily found with keywords–I've tried for years to get Amazon to give us this functionality and finally created it for my own work.

I was so impressed, so engaged, so absolutely educated by this author that I spent no less than four hours, and it might be as much as six, creating a table of all 120 films that he mentioned, with the directors, the year of release, and hot links. The complete list with hot links is at Phi Beta Iota, and should have been an appendix–I certainly give the list to the author should he wish to post it anywhere.

A few highlights, followed by the complete table of 120 films:

2010/07/292010/07/29

Bringing Martin Luther King to China (and back)

01 Poverty, 02 China, 07 Health, 07 Other Atrocities, 10 Security, Civil Society, Counter-Oppression/Counter-Dictatorship Practices, Government, Videos/Movies/Documentaries

Gandhi’s movement for non-violent social change challenged America. Can Martin Luther King, Jr. do the same for China?

Bringing King to China is a documentary film about culture, race and human rights. The film takes Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.'s dream of equality and peace to China—and then brings it back to the U.S. It's the story of a young American teacher in Beijing, whose failed protests against the Iraq war inspire her to produce a play in Chinese about Martin Luther King, Jr. Her journey begins after worldwide demonstrations fail to stop the invasion of Iraq and she learns (mistakenly) that her father, an ABC journalist covering the war, has been killed by a suicide bomber.

Video Trailer

Continue reading “Bringing Martin Luther King to China (and back)”

2010/07/29

Cancer, Infant Mortality and Birth Sex-Ratio in Fallujah, Iraq 2005-2009

04 Inter-State Conflict, 06 Family, 07 Health, 07 Other Atrocities, 10 Security, True Cost

source page

By Chris Busby, Malak Hamdan and Entesar Ariabi

Abstract: There have been anecdotal reports of increases in birth defects and cancer in Fallujah, Iraq blamed on the use of novel weapons (possibly including depleted uranium) in heavy fighting which occurred in that town between US led forces and local elements in 2004. In Jan/Feb 2010 the authors organised a team of researchers who visited 711 houses in Fallujah, Iraq and obtained responses to a questionnaire in Arabic on cancer, birth defects and infant mortality. Continue reading “Cancer, Infant Mortality and Birth Sex-Ratio in Fallujah, Iraq 2005-2009”

2010/07/282010/07/29

Journal: Google, CIA Invest in ‘Future’ of Web Monitoring

Commerce, Commercial Intelligence, Government, Intelligence (government), IO Mapping, Methods & Process

WIRED DANGER ROOM

By Noah Shachtman July 28, 2010 |Categories: Spies, Secrecy and Surveillance

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.

The company is called Recorded Future, and it 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. In a white paper, the company says its temporal analytics engine “goes beyond search” by “looking at the ‘invisible links’ between documents that talk about the same, or related, entities and events.”

The idea is to figure out for each incident who was involved, where it happened and when it might go down. Recorded Future then plots that chatter, showing online “momentum” for any given event.

Recorded Future strips from web pages the people, places and activities they mention. The company examines when and where these events happened (“spatial and temporal analysis”) and the tone of the document (“sentiment analysis”). Then it applies some artificial-intelligence algorithms to tease out connections between the players. Recorded Future maintains an index with more than 100 million events, hosted on Amazon.com servers. The analysis, however, is on the living web.

FULL STORY ONLINE

Phi Beta Iota: Both CIA and Google (as well as DoD/USDI) are treating OSINT as a technical processing problem. They will fail for lack of focus on human intelligence–all humans, all minds, all the time; and for lack of respect of the four quadrants cubed (knowledge, new craft, spivak). When they can overcome the web of fragmented knowledge, and get a grip on all information in all languages all the time (the information cube), we will be impressed. Right now, Google is nowhere near getting a grip on everything digital, let alone analog or unpublished.

2010/07/282010/07/28

Search: the empowered wealth quadrants

Searches

We love it when searches lead us to good stuff not on our site that we can embrace. Below is the top hit on the search question, followed by a link to our own four quadrants of knowledge that enriches.

The site actually looks like a come-hither magnet for the Later Day Saints (Mormons). In any event, what we have clearly established on this web site is that human minds are the one unlimited resource we have; that Open Money is better than the fraud money system we have now; and the The Hidden Wealth of Nations and The Politics of Happiness are core to our future.

Graphic: Four Quadrants J-2 High Cell SMS Low

Who’s Who in Collective Intelligence: Nova Spivak

2010/07/282010/07/28

Reference: IC-Zilla Epitaph

03 Economy, 09 Justice, 10 Security, 11 Society, Commerce, Corruption, DHS, Director of National Intelligence et al (IC), DoD, Government, Law Enforcement, Media Reports, Military, True Cost

The Final Word from a Three-Agency SIS

28 July 2010

In my opinion the Washington Post series that exposed the exponential increase in the size and cost of the U.S. Intelligence Community (IC) was not taken seriously by official Washington and is considered a minor nuisance. That is why the only response to the series, as crafted by the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI), was largely vintage intelligence agency boilerplate with a few bizarre additions such as the claim that the collection and analysis of intelligence are not essential government functions of intelligence agencies and so can be left to contractor personal. The series did not merit a serious response in the thinking of the Executive Branch and Intelligence Community.

In fact the series, although much touted, was a huge disappointment to readers expecting a more deeply researched and in-depth look at the IC. Clearly the craft of investigative journalism has fallen on hard times.

Also it is the case that in this country quantity always trumps quality. The growth in the size of the Intelligence Community is taken by official Washington as a priori evidence of the value it has provided since 9/11. The facts that the current IC is ruinously expensive to operate, is producing largely worthless intelligence, and has frequently failed even in the most basic warning functions are irrelevant. A bloated IC serves as ‘proof’ that political Washington is serious about protecting American citizens from terrorist threats. As with quantity, in the political arena form always trumps substance.

Continue reading “Reference: IC-Zilla Epitaph”

2010/07/282010/07/28

SECRECY NEWS: Over-Classification & Whistleblowers

Uncategorized

CAN THE SECRECY SYSTEM BE FIXED?

Can the national security classification system be fixed before it breaks down altogether in a frenzy of uncontrolled leaks, renewed barriers against information dissemination, and a growing loss of confidence in the integrity of the system?

CAN WHISTLEBLOWERS BE PROTECTED?

One of the most compelling reasons for doing so is to expose perceived wrongdoing.

See, relatedly, “Whistleblowers have nowhere to turn to challenge retaliatory suspensions” by Mike McGraw, the Kansas City Star, July 24.

Phi Beta Iota: Deja vu….from 1993 and of course ON INTELLIGENCE in 2000. Jim Clapper is just buying time. He will never fix this system. Until there is a DNI that can create an Open Source Center that provides decision support for the President–AND Everyone Else, while serving as a benchmark for evaluating both the necessity of classified sources & methods and the return on investment for same, the “system” will stay in grid-lock and whistle-blowers will continue to be pariahs. In a time of insanity and injustice, the place for an honest sane man is outside the US Government and most particularly outside the US “secret” intelligence community. See Also: 1993 TESTIMONY on National Security Information and Reference: 1996 Hill Testimony on Secrecy.