December 2010 – Page 41 – Public Intelligence Blog

Respected media outlets collaborate with WikiLeaks (NewsMeat)

WikiLeaks turned over all of the classified State Department cables it obtained to Le Monde, El Pais in Spain, The Guardian in Britain and Der Spiegel in Germany. The Guardian shared the material with the New York
Times, and the five news organizations have been working together to plan the timing of their reports.

They also have been advising WikiLeaks on which documents to release publicly and what redactions to make to those documents, Kauffmann and others involved in the arrangement said.

WikiLeaks switches to Swiss domain after attacks (NewsMeat)

Wikileaks was forced Friday to switch over to a Swiss domain name,
wikileaks.ch, after a new round of hacker attacks on its system prompted its American domain name provider to withdraw service.

WikiLeaks' U.S. domain name system provider, EveryDNS, withdrew service to the wikileaks.org name late Thursday, saying it took the action because the new hacker attacks threatened the rest of its network.

“Wikileaks.org has become the target of multiple distributed denial of service attacks. These attacks have, and future attacks would, threaten the stability of the EveryDNS.net infrastructure,” EveryDNS said in a statement.

Phi Beta Iota: The first story represents the emergence of hybrid governance and hybrid capabilities networks that will over time displace the inherently corrupt hierarchical stovepipes of the Industrial “Rule by Secrecy” era. The second story represents both the emergence of jackals in cyber-space, attacking “because they can,” and the abject failure of both the Internet Service Providers (ISP) and the US Government to provide order, discipline, and security in cyberspace. We recommend that WikiLeaks seek severe financial damages from both Amazon and EveryDNS–both have failed to be honest and diligent. At the same time, this is an opportunity: any country, such as Chile, that can integrated unlimited low-cost renewable energy, massive data storage & services, and multinational intelligence, all in a cyber-cocoon of absolute confidence immune to attack, will bury the US and EU ISP and telecommunications industries.

Journal: Cyber-Heist 2nd Generation

Journal: Pentagon Network Attacks–Cloud Truth?

Journal: Who Controls (and Secures) the Internet?

Journal: US Research & Development in the Toilet

Journal: Army Industrial-Era Network Security + Cyber-Security RECAP (Links to Past Posts)

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Journal: December Theater of the Absurd

08 Wild Cards, Officers Call

editor spinney time — Chuck Spinney Recommends....

Note: This Reuters report provides additional relevant information. A pdf copy of the referenced ICG report can be downloaded from this link: Afghanistan: Exit vs. Engagement

Chuck Spinney

December 2, 2010

The Unmentioned Question

Staying the Course in Afghanistan

By FRANKLIN C. SPINNEY

Counterpunch

A report, “Afghanistan: Exit vs. Engagement” released on 28 November 2010 by the International Crisis Group (ICG), an organization biased to advocate the neo-imperialistic policy of “humanitarian intervention,” is very important and should be studied carefully for at least two reasons:

First, and most importantly, the ICG makes a concise, and I think accurate, summary of how badly things have gone wrong in Afghanistan, particularly at the all-important grand strategic level of conflict, where the destructive effects of a military strategy must be harmony with, but subordinate to, the constructive aims of the larger political strategy. The ICG’s devastating indictment reveals in considerable detail the extent to which the United States and its Nato lackeys have thoroughly gomered up their nine-year intervention in Afghanistan.

Second, the ICG report is obviously written to influence the so-called policy review that the Obama administration will make in December. Obama’s review is likely to simply rubber stamp the “stay-the-course” non-decisions made in the recent NATO conference in Lisbon. What is revealing about the ICG report is that, in stark contrast to its detailed analysis of our policy mistakes, it contains no concrete recommendations for evolving a corrective pathway into the future.

Read rest of the article….

Phi Beta Iota: Immature intelligence, non-existent strategy, and partisan politicized decision-making processes combine to create the theater of the absurd. Ten threats, twelve policies, eight demographic players–either think about them together, simultaneously, or abandon all pretense of being qualified to govern.

2010/12/02

Definitions: Segmented Polycentric Integrated Networks

Definitions

SPIN Hits

Tip of the Hat to Sumner Carter at Facebook.

2010/12/02

Reference: General David Petraeus–An Examination

04 Inter-State Conflict, 05 Iran, 10 Security, 11 Society, Cultural Intelligence, Military, Misinformation & Propaganda, Officers Call, Power Behind-the-Scenes/Special Interests

David Petraeus — Hero Celebrity

By Michael Brenner (Senior Fellow, the Center for Transatlantic Relations) – Huffington Post – December 2, 2010

There is one celebrity with the makings of a national hero, someone who has the qualities that might carry him right into the White House. It is David Petraeus. He is almost universally credited with the brilliant achievement of saving American honor and gaining an approximation of ‘victory' in Iraq. President Obama himself is in awe of this warrior-intellectual to whom he defers on all matters in the Greater Middle East. Petraeus' mythic standing is a perfect example of how the compelling demand for a hero creates the illusion that indeed a savior has arrived.

Read the balance of the article…

2010/12/02

Reference: Libraries as Change Agents

Briefings (Core)

“Libraries and Broadband: Becoming Radical Change Agents in Our Communities”

December 2, 2010 16:05

Slides from a recent presentation by Professor R. David Lankes, Director of the Information Institute, Syracuse University's School of Information Studies, and director of the library science program for the school.

From the Abstract:

And so we come to the point. Why bring broadband libraries. We don’t do it as a means to bring facebook to the masses. We wire our buildings not as points of distraction or simply another service the library offers. Broadband is not a way to bring the world to the citizens of Vermont, but to unleash the passions and potentials of the citizens of Vermont on the rest of the world. Just as the roads of previous generations bound together empires and democracies We can use broadband to bring together the farmer and the lawyer, the entrepreneur and the student, the politician and the protestor in a grand conversation on the future of the state.

Access the Presentation (PDF; 48 Slides)

Note: Professor Lankes adds, “Due to conference setup I was not able to capture the audio and screencast. However, the session was video taped, so I hope to add these later.”

Source: Virtual Dave…Real Blog

Tip of the Hat to Gary Price at LinkedIn.

2010/12/022010/12/02

Reference: Policy Agendas Project Database

Budgets & Funding, Civil Society, Collective Intelligence, Cultural Intelligence, Earth Intelligence, Government, Methods & Process, Policies, Policy

“Online Database Tracks Congressional, Presidential and Public Priorities”

November 22, 2010 23:10

From a University of Texas at Austin Announcement:

As a new Congress prepares to take office, a powerful online tool from University of Texas at Austin political scientists can help answer questions about lawmakers' shifting focus over time, differences between Republican and Democratic priorities and whether wave elections correlate with policy changes in Washington.

The Policy Agendas Project database allows journalists, scholars and interest groups to easily track and compare the issues that presidents and members of Congress have taken up since 1947 and to assess how those actions reflected the mood of the country.

The interface lets users sift through dozens of issues and sub-issues — health care, the environment, taxes — to look at the topics leaders dealt with in congressional hearings, new laws, executive orders and State of the Union addresses, as well as public opinion about problems facing the nation.

[Clip]

The data generated by the project are free and publicly available. They come with software that allows them to be used in classrooms. Jones and his colleagues released earlier versions of the Policy Agendas Project while he was a professor at the University of Washington.

Tip of the Hat to Gary Price at LinkedIn.

Phi Beta Iota: This has some promise, especially if they design it to be scalable across countries and down to the state and local level. However, since nothing is policy until it is in the budget, the real truth tellers will be if they can link this to actual budgetary authorizations, allocations, and obligations; factor in “true costs” of any given policy element; and open it up to fact-based citizen dialog and deliberation.

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