This appears to be another piece of the larger trend toward the complete failure of all governments — the most sophisticated governments have now become the most inept and the most corrupt (in the holistic sense of the term). This does not bode well for humanity.
Security giant G4S is the second-largest private employer on earth
BusinessInsider, 26 February 2012
With more than 625,000 employees, this listed security giant is the second-largest private employer in the world(behind Wal-Mart). While some of its business is focused on routine bank, prison and airport security, G4S also plays an important role in crisis-zones right around the world.In 2008, G4S swallowed up Armorgroup, whose 9,000-strong army of guards has protected about one third of all non-military supply convoys in Iraq (it's also notorious for its wild parties and for having Afghan warlords on its payroll).
But the combined group has a security presence in more than 125 countries, including some of the most dangerous parts of Africa and Latin America, where it offers government agencies and private companies heavily-armed security forces, land-mine clearance, military intelligence and training.
By South Asia Intelligence Review: The crisis in India today is one of capacities, and this cannot be addressed by the reinvention of institutional forms. It doesn't matter if our responses are centralised or decentralised, as long as the executive agencies remain infirm, under-manned, under-trained and under-equipped.
Our principal problems lie, not in architecture, but in manpower, materials and execution. We have eviscerated our institutions over decades, and now believe that the solution lies in creating layer upon layer of meta-institutions to ‘monitor', ‘coordinate' and ‘oversee' this largely dysfunctional apparatus.
Counter-terrorism: The Architecture of Failure, November 24, 2011
The National Counter-terrorism Centre (NCTC) is an ill-conceived, redundant and derivative, vanity project, which aspires to imitate its namesake in the US, without the strength, the sinews, the resources or the constitutional context that would make such aspirations attainable.
Drexel University engineers have found a way to improve upon ordinary Portland cement (OPC), the glue that’s bonded much of the world’s construction since the late 1800s. In research recently published in Cement and Concrete Composites the group served up a recipe for cement that is more energy efficient and cost effective to produce than masonry’s most prevalent bonding compound.
Drexel’s “green” variety is a form of alkali-activated cement that utilizes an industrial byproduct, called slag, and a common mineral, limestone, and does not require heating to produce.
According to Dr. Michel W. Barsoum, A.W. Grosvenor professor in Drexel’s Department of Materials Science and Engineering, this alternative production method and the ubiquity of the mix ingredients, lessens the cost of materials for Drexel’s cement by about 40 percent versus Portland cement and reduces energy consumption and carbon dioxide production by 97 percent.
“Cement consumption is rapidly rising, especially in newly industrialized countries, and it’s already responsible for 5 percent of human-made carbon dioxide. This is a unique way to limit the environmental consequences of meeting demand,” Dr. Alex Moseson, one of the lead researchers on the project, said.
Syria-Saudi Arabia: During Friday's meeting in Tunisia, Saudi Foreign Minister Saud al-Faisal said he supported giving weapons and ammunition to groups fighting the Syrian regime. “I think it's an excellent idea,” Prince Saud told reporters in Tunisia. Asked why, he replied: “Because they have to defend themselves.”
Comment: Prince Saud's remarks make clear that Saudi Arabia has decided to roll back the Shiite heresy in Syria and block Iranian influence in Arab lands.
Syria-Hamas: On Friday, Hamas leaders, including Ismail Haniya, publicly turned against the al-Asad regime in Syria by announcing their support for the opposition. During Friday prayers at Al Azhar mosque in Cairo, Haniya said, “I salute all people of the Arab Spring, or Islamic winter, and I salute the Syrian people who seek freedom, democracy and reform.” The crowd answered with calls of “No Hezbollah and no Iran” and “the Syrian revolution is an Arab revolution.”
The policy change also was announced at a rally in the Gaza strip. Hamas' leadership also confirmed longstanding reports that they have vacated offices in Damascus and moved to Lebanon.
Comment: The Hamas statements, if backed by action, represent a strategic setback for Iran and seem to signify that Hamas has reconciled with Arab leaders, such as the Saudis and the Muslim Brotherhood. This does not signify a reduction in hostility toward Israel, but the Palestinian cause appears to be an Arab cause once again.
Last year the Saudis warned the Iranians on several occasions to cease meddling in Arab affairs. A Saudi role in Hamas' change of policy has not been reported, but its congruence with Saudi desires and interests to contain Iran strongly suggests significant Saudi involvement.
While Iran is maintaining its defiance over nuclear issues, it is proving unable to preserve its strategic position west of Baghdad. It is being contained on multiple fronts.
Code Across America ATX: A Civic Innovation Hackathon
Google-funded Code for America was in Austin Saturday for a codeathon using data accessible via the city’s data portal. I dropped by the geek chic coworking facility Conjunctured, where the codeathon was happening, and hung out long enough to get a sense of the projects the ~40 coders were tackling. Those included a Bike Accident and Route Safety app, an app for finding miscellaneous stuff around town, and a “garden dating” app (to help people who want a community garden find a space). What was missing? For at least one project (Find It), there were fewer sources of data than the developers would’ve liked. I realized that it’s not enough to bring coders together to create apps – we should also be cultivating data sources. A project to build databases and facilitate citizen input would be a logical complement to the various codeathons.
Phi Beta Iota: Google is much more predatory than people realize. Any serious long-term endeavor must be completely open source and avoid Google like the plague–it comes with harm built in. The most exciting initiatives, generally lacking even the most basic funding, seek to combine Open Data Access, Open Source Hardware, Open Source Software, and Open Spectrum. That will lead to an Autonomous Internet and to holistic public intelligence with integrity.
The acid test of any scientific theory is whether or not its predictions reasonably match up to reality. The attached paper by Dr. David Evans is important because it compares predictions of climate models predicting global warming to our most advanced temperature measurement technologies. This is a good example of the kind of information that should be shaping the global warming debate.
The task facing scientists who disagree with this analysis is simple, because this author is up front with his information. His data is sourced and logical descriptions of the models he is testing are clear. The prediction/reality mismatch information shown in this paper is can be replicated and tested for falsification. All one has to do is show why the data is wrong, misleading, or improperly interpreted, or why his logic is wrong — no name calling is needed in what is clearly grist for an honest scientific exchange.
By Dr David M.W. Evans (republished here with permission, PDF link below)
We check the main predictions of the climate models against the best and latest data. Fortunately the climate models got all their major predictions wrong. Why? Every serious skeptical scientist has been consistently saying essentially the same thing for over 20 years, yet most people have never heard the message – here it is, put simply enough for any lay reader willing to pay attention.
What the Government Climate Scientists Say
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Figure 1: The climate models. If the CO2 level doubles (as it is on course to do by about 2070 to 2100), the climate models estimate the temperature increase due to that extra CO2 will be about 1.1°C × 3 = 3.3°C.i
The direct effect of CO2 is well-established physics, based on laboratory results, and known for over a century.ii
Feedbacks are due to the ways the Earth reacts to the direct warming effect of the CO2. The threefold amplification by feedbacks is based on the assumption, or guess, made around 1980, that more warming due to CO2 will cause more evaporation from the oceans and that this extra water vapor will in turn lead to even more heat trapping because water vapor is the main greenhouse gas. And extra heat will cause even more evaporation, and so on. This amplification is built into all the climate models.iii The amount of amplification is estimated by assuming that nearly all the industrial-age warming is due to our CO2.
The government climate scientists and the media often tell us about the direct effect of the CO2, but rarely admit that two thirds of their projected temperature increases are due to amplification by feedbacks.
What the Skeptics Say
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Figure 2: The skeptic’s view. If the CO2 level doubles, skeptics estimates that the temperature increase due to that extra CO2 will be about 1.1°C × 0.5 ≈ 0.6°C.iv
The serious skeptical scientists have always agreed with the government climate scientists about the direct effect of CO2. The argument is entirely about the feedbacks.
The feedbacks dampen or reduce the direct effect of the extra CO2, cutting it roughly in half.v The main feedbacks involve evaporation, water vapor, and clouds. In particular, water vapor condenses into clouds, so extra water vapor due to the direct warming effect of extra CO2 will cause extra clouds, which reflect sunlight back out to space and cool the earth, thereby reducing the overall warming.
There are literally thousands of feedbacks, each of which either reinforces or opposes the direct warming effect of the extra CO2. Almost every long-lived system is governed by net feedback that dampens its response to a perturbation. If a system instead reacts to a perturbation by amplifying it, the system is likely to reach a tipping point and become unstable (like the electronic squeal that erupts when a microphone gets too close to its speakers). The earth’s climate is long-lived and stable— it has never gone into runaway greenhouse, unlike Venus — which strongly suggests that the feedbacks dampen temperature perturbations such as that from extra CO2.
What the Data Says
The climate models have been essentially the same for 30 years now, maintaining roughly the same sensitivity to extra CO2even while they got more detailed with more computer power.
How well have the climate models predicted the temperature?
Does the data better support the climate models or the skeptic’s view?
Air Temperatures
One of the earliest and most important predictions was presented to the US Congress in 1988 by Dr James Hansen, the “father of global warming”:
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Figure 3: Hansen’s predictionsvi to the US Congress in 1988, compared to the subsequent temperatures as measured by NASA satellitesvii.
Phi Beta Iota: The New Craft of Intelligence restores integrity to the process of intelligence. There are no governments, corporations, or universities today actually committed to the whole truth and nothing but the truth. Everyone is isolated in little stove-pipes that allow good people to be doing good things, when in the aggregate they are simply perpetuating huge lies against the public interest. This is the challenge of our times.
Many thanks to GSMA for their kind invitation to speak at the 2012 World Mobile Congress (WMC12) in Barcelona, Spain. GSMA is formally launching its Disaster Response Program at WMC12 with an inaugural working group. “The Disaster Response programme seeks to understand how mobile operators can most effectively support each other and improve resilience among networks in disaster scenarios, and identify how the mobile industry can best help citizens and humanitarian organisations on the ground following a crisis.” Below is the presentation I plan to give.
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When disaster strikes, access to information is equally important as access to food and water. This link between information, disaster response and aid was officially recognized by the Secretary General of the International Federation of the Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies in the 2005 World Disasters Report. Since then, disaster-affected populations have become increasingly digital thanks to the widespread adoption of mobile technologies. Indeed, as a result of these mobile technologies, affected populations are increasingly able to source, share and generate a vast amount of information, which is completely transforming disaster response.
Take the case of Haiti, for example. Within 48 hours of the devastating earthquake that struck Port-au-Prince in 2010, a dedicated SMS short code was set up to crowdsource information on the urgent needs of the disaster-affected population. This would not have been possible without the partnership with Digicel Haiti since they're the ones who provided the free SMS short code that enabled anyone in Haiti to text in their most urgent needs and location.
