Month: April 2012

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DefDog: NSA Ubber Alles – Resistance is Futile

07 Other Atrocities, Corruption, Government, IO Deeds of War, Military
DefDog

Outside the normal press field, this is the second article I saw today in
CSO Salted Hash newsletter about Big Brother….

Will Obama preside over the coming of Big Brother?

Privacy advocates and civil libertarians say among the president's broken promises is a failure to restrain the NSA's growing domestic surveillance

By

April 25, 2012 — CSO —

If President Barack Obama is going to win a second term, he may have to do it without the support of privacy and civil liberties organizations, including those in information and personal security.

Increasingly the president, who was expected to fulfill the dreams of civil libertarians by creating a more open, transparent and less-intrusive government, is instead being viewed as a nightmare.

Read full article.

Phi Beta Iota:  This is not about Obama — or whoever is in the White House including Romney or Ron Paul or Hillary Clinton.  This is about a financial system that is on auto-pilot, that has rotted out the core of the Republic.

See Also:

NSA Domestic Intercept Map? NSA Lies, Spies in Orwellian World of Gov't Surveillance

The NSA possible domestic interception/collection points have been mapped and include seven AT&T and one Verizon location. Despite NSA Chief Alexander denying domestic spying, NSA whistleblower Binney told Democracy Now that the NSA is lying and has copies of all emails in the United States. Binney added that the Total Information Awareness program was alive and covertly running . . . and may still be.

Read full article, see map of seven known NSA sites focused on domestic US targets.

The Battle for the Soul of the Republic (Reality Sandwich)

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Chuck Spinney: US Senate Notices Next Atomic Disaster in Japan

05 Energy, 07 Other Atrocities, 08 Proliferation, 10 Security, 11 Society, Civil Society, Corruption, Earth Intelligence, Government, Intelligence (government), IO Impotency
Chuck Spinney

Warning Signs for the US

by ROBERT ALVAREZ,
Counterpunch, APRIL 24, 2012

In the aftermath of the world’s worst nuclear power disaster, the news media is just beginning to grasp that the dangers to Japan and the rest of the world posed by the Fukushima-Dai-Ichi site are far from over.   After repeated warnings by former senior Japanese officials, nuclear experts, and now a U.S. Senator, it is sinking in that the irradiated nuclear fuel stored in spent fuel pools amidst the reactor ruins may have far greater potential offsite consequences  than the molten cores.

After visiting the site recently, Senator Ron Wyden (D-OR) wrote to Japan’s ambassador to the U.S. stating that, “loss of containment in any of these pools could result in an even greater release than the initial accident.”

This is why:

Read full article.

Phi Beta Iota:  This is a classic illustration of how dangerously useless it is to have a massively expensive secret intelligence and “heavy metal” military, without capacity for global coverage, true cost economics, and so on.   Until governments make the shift toward future-oriented hybid governnance — embracing the core ideals of clarity, diversity, and integrity — it will not be possible to get a grip on the challenges and the possibilities facing the human species on Earth.  We have been here before: in the 1970's when Peak Oil, Peak Water, and AIDs were all briefed to the US Senate and to the White House.  The reality is that the corruption characteristic of those bodies then is still with us–there is only ONE serious approach to this and all other issues, and that is the creation of the World Brain and Global Game and a commensurate commitment to integrate true cost economics into every decision, and to make every decision as indigenous communities have done for thousands of years: future-oriented — Seventh Generation.

See Also:

Continue reading “Chuck Spinney: US Senate Notices Next Atomic Disaster in Japan”

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Patrick Meier: Future Trends in Global Geospatial Information Management

Advanced Cyber/IO, Geospatial
Patrick Meier

Future Trends in Global Geospatial Information Management

The United Nations Committee of Experts on Global Information Management (GGIM) recently organized a meeting of thought-leaders and visionaries in the geo-spatial world to identify the future of this space over the next 5-10 years. These experts came up with some 80+ individual predictions. I've included some of the more interesting ones below.

  • The use of Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) as a tool for rapid geospatial data collection will increase.
  • 3D and even 4D geospatial information, incorporating time as the fourth dimension, will increase.
  • Technology will move faster than legal and governance structures.
  • The link between geospatial information and social media, plus other actor networks, will become more and more important.
  • Real-time info will enable more dynamic modeling & response to disasters.
  • Free and open source software will continue to grow as viable alternatives both in terms of software, and potentially in analysis and processing.

Continue reading “Patrick Meier: Future Trends in Global Geospatial Information Management”

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Sepp Hasslberger: Forget WiFi and Radio Waves, LiFi Uses Lightbulbs to Connect to the Internet

Advanced Cyber/IO
Sepp Hasslberger

Forget WiFi and Radio Waves, LiFi Uses Lightbulbs to Connect to the Internet

“One German physicist, Harald Haas, has come up with a solution he calls “data through illumination” – taking the fiber out of fiber optics by sending data through an LED lightbulb that varies in intensity faster than the human eye can follow. It's the same idea behind infrared remote controls, but far more powerful.

“You can imagine all kinds of uses for this technology, from public internet access through street lamps to auto-piloted cars that communicate through their headlights.”

“And more data coming through the visible spectrum could help alleviate concerns that the electromagnetic waves that come with WiFi could adversely affect your health. Talk about the bright side.”

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Howard Rheingold: DeepaMehta — MindMap + Communications

Advanced Cyber/IO
Howard Rheingold

Welcome to DeepaMehta | DeepaMehta

Looks like a more sociable version of Personal Brain — mindmapping plus communication. “DeepaMehta is a software platform for knowledge workers. The special feature of DeepaMehta is the situation-centered user interface: information belonging to one working context is — together with its content associations — displayed and edited in a single window. Whether it is text, images, documents, emails, websites, events or for example contacts.”

Click on Image to Enlarge
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Yoda: Thinking in a Foreign Language Improves Decisions

07 Other Atrocities, Corruption, Government, IO Impotency, Military, Officers Call, Policies
Got Crowd? BE the Force!

Maybe we should stop worrying about analysts w second language capabilities and insist that policymakers have a second language.

Thinking in foreign language makes decisions more rational

To judge a risk more clearly, it may help to consider it in a foreign language.

A series of experiments on more than 300 people from the US and Korea found that thinking in a second language reduced deep-seated, misleading biases that unduly influence how risks and benefits are perceived.

“Would you make the same decisions in a foreign language as you would in your native tongue?” asked psychologists led by Boaz Keysar of the University of Chicago in an April 18 Psychological Science study.

“It may be intuitive that people would make the same choices regardless of the language they are using, or that the difficulty of using a foreign language would make decisions less systematic. We discovered, however, that the opposite is true: Using a foreign language reduces decision-making biases,” wrote Keysar’s team.

Psychologists say human reasoning is shaped by two distinct modes of thought: one that’s systematic, analytical and cognition-intensive, and another that’s fast, unconscious and emotionally charged.

In light of this, it’s plausible that the cognitive demands of thinking in a non-native, non-automatic language would leave people with little leftover mental horsepower, ultimately increasing their reliance on quick-and-dirty cogitation.

Equally plausible, however, is that communicating in a learned language forces people to be deliberate, reducing the role of potentially unreliable instinct. Research also shows that immediate emotional reactions to emotively charged words are muted in non-native languages, further hinting at deliberation.

. . . . . . .

The researchers believe a second language provides a useful cognitive distance from automatic processes, promoting analytical thought and reducing unthinking, emotional reaction.

Read full article.

Phi Beta Iota:  Integrity is not just about people making decisions.  It is about the whole — the context, the clarity of communication, the diversity of views, the integrity of all feedback loops.  Today there is very little integrity in the process of intelligence – on those rare occasions when it actually exists — and there is zero integrity in the policy process, something Paul Pillar and Morton Halperin (among many others) have documented nicely.

See Also:

Morton Halperin, Bureaucratic Politics and Foreign Policy (Brookings, 2006)

Daniel Kahneman, Thinking Fast and Slow (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2011)

Paul Pillar, Intelligence and U.S. Foreign Policy: Iraq, 9/11, and Misguided Reform (Columbia, 2011)

Phi Beta Iota: Journal: Politics & Intelligence–Partners Only When Integrity is Central to Both

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John Steiner: Tea Party & Occupy Finding Common Ground — Will They – And Independents and the Little Disenfranchised Parties – Converge in Time?

09 Justice, 11 Society, Civil Society, Collective Intelligence, Counter-Oppression/Counter-Dictatorship Practices, Cultural Intelligence, Ethics
John Steiner

This morning I got this note from Co-Intelligence Institute board member Lyn Manju Bazzell, who lives in Ashland, a town in southern Oregon's Rogue Valley:

“A little news from the Rogue Valley:  went to a meeting with 200 people last night.  It was a panel of 2 Tea Party leaders and 2 Occupy leaders in the Rogue Valley answering questions from the audience. A very positive move for our area!  Jeff Golden put it together with some help and there is a desire for ongoing conversations for the Rogue Valley. It is an outgrowth of one of  his Immense Possibilities episodes that included these 4 people. Yea for Jeff  – he's a mensch!

“Here are some areas of common ground that were shared by the panel:  Personal liberty issues; Homeland Security; Election reform – concern about voting machines; lobbying; self-reliance; importance of local action; concentration of power in the hands of the elites (a bit of difference re: who is really holding the power, with the Tea Party focused on government and Occupy on big business, but the identification of lobbying as an issues offers an open window into a deeper discussion; size of the military and our aggressive global orientation (this was a surprise to me for Tea Partiers).”

An hour later I received the following article from Lance Bisaccia:

Tea party, Occupy supporters find they have many similarities

Two groups come together at forum; avoid ‘hot debate'
By John Darling for the Tidings Posted: 2:00 AM April 24, 2012

In their first public outing together, tea party and Occupy backers — and an audience of 200 — found a lot of common ground on the issue that corporations, lobbyists, the military and the federal government have a huge amount of power, are “bought” — and aren't very responsive to the needs of the average person.