Month: March 2012

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Patrick Meier: Crisis Mapping Climate Change, Conflict, Aid in Africa

Advanced Cyber/IO, Blog Wisdom, Civil Society, Earth Intelligence, Geospatial, Peace Intelligence
Patrick Meier

Crisis Mapping Climate Change, Conflict and Aid in Africa

I recently gave a guest lecture at the University of Texas, Austin, and finally had the opportunity to catch up with my colleague Josh Busby who has been working on a promising crisis mapping project as part of the university’s Climate Change and African Political Stability Program (CCAPS).

Josh and team just released the pilot version of its dynamic mapping tool, which aims to provide the most comprehensive view yet of climate change and security in Africa. The platform, developed in partnership with AidData, enables users to “visualize data on climate change vulnerability, conflict, and aid, and to analyze how these issues intersect in Africa.” The tool is powered by ESRI technology and allows researchers as well as policymakers to “select and layer any combination of CCAPS data onto one map to assess how myriad climate change impacts and responses intersect. For example, mapping conflict data over climate vulnera-bility data can assess how local conflict patterns could exacerbate climate-induced insecurity in a region. It also shows how conflict dynamics are changing over time and space.”

The platform provides hyper-local data on climate change and aid-funded interventions, which can provide important insights on how development assistance might (or might not) be reducing vulnerability. For example, aid projects funded by 27 donors in Malawi (i.e., aid flows) can be layered on top of the climate change vulnerability data to “discern whether adaptation aid is effectively targeting the regions where climate change poses the most significant risk to the sustainable development and political stability of a country.”

If this weren’t impressive enough, I was positively amazed when I learned from Josh and team that the conflict data they’re using, the Armed Conflict Location Event Data (ACLED), will be updated on a weekly basis as part of this project, which is absolutely stunning. Back in the day, ACLED was specifically coding historical data. A few years ago they closed the gap by updating some conflict data on a yearly basis. Now the temporal lag will just be one week. Note that the mapping tool already draws on the Social Conflict in Africa Database (SCAD).

This project is an important contribution to the field of crisis mapping and I look forward to following CCAPS’s progress closely over the next few months. I’m hoping that Josh will present this project at the 2012 International Crisis Mappers Conference (ICCM 2012) later this year.

Phi Beta Iota:  Now imagine a global database on corruption that is updated daily and then hourly, anonymously sourced as needed, calling out corrupt officials by name, date, time, and place.

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Graphic: Competing Influences on the Policymaker (Treverton)

Leadership-Integrity, Policies-Harmonization, Political, Tribes
Click on Image to Enlarge

Source Attribution:

Robert David Steele, ON INTELLIGENCE: Spies and Secrecy in an Open World (AFCEA 2000, OSS 2002), “Figure 17: Competing Influences on the Policymaker,” p. 53.  Recreated by the author from memory of the same information presented by Dr. Gregory Treverton (originator) at the Harvard JFK “Intelligence Policy Seminar” circa 1986.

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Mini-Me: Bin Laden Road Show Begins Part I – David Ignatius on the CIA’s “Captured” Abbottabad Files

07 Other Atrocities, Corruption, Director of National Intelligence et al (IC), Government, IO Deeds of War, Media
Who? Mini-Me?

Huh?  We do not make this stuff up.  CIA's Covert Action Staff is evidently having a ball, and David Ignatius has no problem playing the bimbo.  Note the built-in pre-excuse on poor syntax.  Note the pretense that incoherence was connected to long periods of time between sending, receiving, and responding.  The hit on Fox is some kid [or geriatric annuitant]'s idiot idea of being clever — when Bin Laden was alive, he knew full well there is no substantive difference between CNN, NBC, ABC, CBS, and Fox [or the two political parties in the US that exclude everyone else from access to the public treasure].

All of this is beyond belief for anyone with BOTH intelligence and integrity.  When all of the documents are released (after the November elections, of course), they will be torn apart.

The bin Laden plot to kill President Obama

David Ignatius

The Washington Post, 16 March 2012

Before his death, Osama bin Ladenboldly commanded his network to organize special cells in Afghanistan and Pakistan to attack the aircraft of President Obama and Gen. David H. Petraeus.

“The reason for concentrating on them,” the al-Qaeda leader explained to his top lieutenant, “is that Obama is the head of infidelity and killing him automatically will make [Vice President] Biden take over the presidency. . . . Biden is totally unprepared for that post, which will lead the U.S. into a crisis. As for Petraeus, he is the man of the hour . . . and killing him would alter the war’s path” in Afghanistan.

Continue reading “Mini-Me: Bin Laden Road Show Begins Part I – David Ignatius on the CIA's “Captured” Abbottabad Files”

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Eagle: Drums of War — Israel-Iran AND US-Uganda

Commercial Intelligence, Corruption, Government, Military, Peace Intelligence
300 Million Talons...

Brent At $126 As Israel Security Cabinet Votes 8 To 6 To Attack Iran

According to Israel's NRG, in a just completed cabinet vote, for the first time Netanyahu has gotten a majority (8 over 6) supporting an Iran attack. NRG also notes that at this point Israel has decided to not wait until the US elections in November before proceeding with sending crude to the stratosphere. From NRG (google translated): “Israeli political sources believe that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu a majority Cabinet support Israeli military action against Iran without American approval….He announced that he would not hesitate to perform the operation without the approval of President Obama mentioned the precedent of the decision to attack the Iraqi reactor, Prime Minister Menachem Begin, and with the comments heard yesterday some cabinet ministers say privately that “It sounds like a speech preparation for attack.

US Launches PR Campaign for Ugandan Oil Intervention

Phi Beta Iota:  Oil and Oil Futures are the common denominator; Israeli aggression in expanding the settlements while everyone is watching Iran are the very important sideshow.  It is a real shame when the public cannot trust its government to know the truth, much less tell the truth.  This is about bets on oil futures.  Can the US Government determine who gains from oil going up another $20 a barrel in March?   Can the public do this on its own?

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Chuck Spinney: Investigating NATO’s War Crimes Against Libya

02 China, 04 Inter-State Conflict, 05 Civil War, 06 Russia, 07 Other Atrocities, 08 Wild Cards, 09 Justice, 10 Security, 11 Society, DoD, Government, Law Enforcement, Military, Non-Governmental, Officers Call, Peace Intelligence
Chuck Spinney

Investigations Around Libya

NATO’S Craven Coverup of Its Libyan Bombing

by VIJAY PRASHAD, Counterpunch, March 15, 2012

Ten days into the uprising in Benghazi, Libya, the United Nations’ Human Rights Council established the International Commission of Inquiry on Libya. The purpose of the Commission was to “investigate all alleged violations of international human rights law in Libya.” The broad agenda was to establish the facts of the violations and crimes and to take such actions as to hold the identified perpetrators accountable. On June 15, the Commission presented its first report to the Council. This report was provisional, since the conflict was still ongoing and access to the country was minimal. The June report was no more conclusive than the work of the human rights non-governmental organizations (such as Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch). In some instances, the work of investigators for these NGOs (such as Donatella Rovera of Amnesty) was of higher quality than that of the Commission.

Due to the uncompleted war and then the unsettled security state in the country in its aftermath, the Commission did not return to the field till October 2011, and did not begin any real investigation before December 2011. On March 2, 2012, the Commission finally produced a two hundred-page document that was presented to the Human Rights Council in Geneva. Little fanfare greeted this report’s publication, and the HRC’s deliberation on it was equally restrained.

Nonetheless, the report is fairly revelatory, making two important points:

Continue reading “Chuck Spinney: Investigating NATO's War Crimes Against Libya”

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Venessa Miemis: Social Media and the Evolution of Consciousness

Cultural Intelligence

This is my favorite talk I’ve given so far. No notes, no real prep… just sharing my views about the web, the co-evolution of humanity and our technologies, and where we might be taking ourselves.

“Fall Conference 2011 Introduction and Social Media and the Evolution of Consciousness, Presented on 10/15/11, Venessa Miemis

Venessa Miemis is a writer and digital ethnographer, exploring how social media is transforming communication, collaboration, and commerce in a network society. She is currently Executive Director for Contact, a participatory festival that highlights opportunities for new forms of p2p culture, governance, and collective action. Her recent projects include The Future of Facebook, a 6 part video series, and Open Foresight, a methodology for engaging experts and the public to create collaborative visions of the future together. She authors the blog, Emergent by Design.”

@ Austen Riggs Social Media Conference