Reference: Life-Cycle Costing–A Question of Value
Analysis, Commercial Intelligence, Communities of Practice, Earth Intelligence, Ethics, Key Players, Methods & Process, Monographs, Policies, ThreatsJournal: Iranians Making Sense on Climate Matters?
Commercial Intelligence, Earth Intelligence, Peace Intelligence
Ahmadinejad makes more sense on climate change than US leaders
Ahmadinejad: All countries should be able to use nuclear power
Iran's President Says Materialism, Capitalism Cause of Climate Change
Islamic Republic of Iran News Network Television (IRINN) as translated by Open Source Center (OSC)
Friday, December 18, 2009
(Ahmadinezhad in progress) … … Every year millions of people lose their lives as a result of pollution, and skin and respiratory illnesses are on the increase. If greenhouse-gases continue to increase at the present speed, they will reach twice the level of gases before industrialization. In other words, instead of a reduction of 50 per cent, they will increase by 50 per cent and will pose a real challenge to the natural environment.
Gentleman, you may associate these remarks with various similar and related issues in your minds. However, the question is this: What is the cause? The first answer is the increase in the consumption of fossil fuels and widespread and destructive meddling with nature. But the main and more serious question is: What is the factor responsible for the increase in the use of fossil fuel and meddling with nature? I would like to present the answer to this question in two levels.
The first level takes a fundamental and macro view of the problem. Is the climate change phenomenon merely an ecological problem or is it first and foremost a cultural, behavioral and economical issue?
Dear colleagues, a glance at the changes in social circumstances and thought processes in the, at least, past two decades will reveal the dominance of materialism over thought, behavior and ties in vast parts of the world. The survival of capitalism depends on the rigorous spread of consumerism and widespread meddling in nature.
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Journal: Integrity (Truth) Coming to the Top on Banking
03 Economy, Commerce, Commercial Intelligence, Government, Law Enforcement
I doubt it, but hope springs eternal could this be a significant development? To date, Simon Johnson has been a very astute observer of the financial meltdown and has been crusading for breaking up the mega banks …
Simon Johnson
Baseline Scenario
Dec 17, 2009
For most the past 12 months, Paul Volcker was sitting on the policy sidelines. He had impressive sounding job titles – member of President Obama’s Transition Economic Advisory Board immediately after last November’s election, and quickly named to head the new Economic Recovery Board.
But the Recovery Board, and Volcker himself, have seldom met with the President. Economic and financial sector policy, by all accounts, has been made largely by Tim Geithner at Treasury and Larry Summers at the White House, with help from Peter Orszag at the Office of Management and Budget, and Christina Romer at the Council of Economic Advisers.
With characteristic wry humor, Volcker denied in late October that he had lost clout within the administration: “I did not have influence to start with.”
But that same front page interview in the New York Times [10/21/09] contained a well placed shock to then prevailing policy consensus.
Volcker, legendary former chairman of the Federal Reserve Board with much more experience of Wall Street than any current policymaker, was blunt: We need to break up our biggest banks and return to the basic split of activities that existed under the Glass-Steagall Act of 1933 – a highly regulated (and somewhat boring) set of banks to run the payments system, and a completely separate set of financial entities to help firms raise capital (and to trade securities).
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Journal: Contractors Out of Control, Money Wasted
04 Inter-State Conflict, 05 Civil War, 08 Wild Cards, 10 Security, 11 Society, Commerce, Commercial Intelligence, Ethics, Government, Military, Peace IntelligencePublished on Friday, December 18, 2009 by Rebel Reports
Stunning Statistics About the War Every American Should Know
Contrary to popular belief, the US actually has 189,000 personnel on the ground in Afghanistan right now—and that number is quickly rising.
by Jeremy Scahill
A hearing in Sen. Claire McCaskill's Contract Oversight subcommittee on contracting in Afghanistan has highlighted some important statistics that provide a window into the extent to which the Obama administration has picked up the Bush-era war privatization baton and sprinted with it. Overall, contractors now comprise a whopping 69% of the Department of Defense's total workforce, “the highest ratio of contractors to military personnel in US history.” That's not in one war zone-that's the Pentagon in its entirety.
In Afghanistan, the Obama administration blows the Bush administration out of the privatized water. According to a memo [PDF] released by McCaskill's staff, “From June 2009 to September 2009, there was a 40% increase in Defense Department contractors in Afghanistan. During the same period, the number of armed private security contractors working for the Defense Department in Afghanistan doubled, increasing from approximately 5,000 to more than 10,000.”
At present, there are 104,000 Department of Defense contractors in Afghanistan. According to a report this week from the Congressional Research Service, as a result of the coming surge of 30,000 troops in Afghanistan, there may be up to 56,000 additional contractors deployed. But here is another group of contractors that often goes unmentioned: 3,600 State Department contractors and 14,000 USAID contractors. That means that the current total US force in Afghanistan is approximately 189,000 personnel (68,000 US troops and 121,000 contractors). And remember, that's right now. And that, according to McCaskill, is a conservative estimate. A year from now, we will likely see more than 220,000 US-funded personnel on the ground in Afghanistan.
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Journal: Insurgents Hack U.S. Drones
04 Inter-State Conflict, 05 Civil War, 08 Wild Cards, 10 Security, Commerce, Commercial Intelligence, Ethics, Military, Mobile, Peace Intelligence, Real Time
Insurgents Hack U.S. Drones
$26 Software Is Used to Breach Key Weapons in Iraq; Iranian Backing Suspected
WASHINGTON — Militants in Iraq have used $26 off-the-shelf software to intercept live video feeds from U.S. Predator drones, potentially providing them with information they need to evade or monitor U.S. military operations.
Senior defense and intelligence officials said Iranian-backed insurgents intercepted the video feeds by taking advantage of an unprotected communications link in some of the remotely flown planes' systems. Shiite fighters in Iraq used software programs such as SkyGrabber — available for as little as $25.95 on the Internet — to regularly capture drone video feeds, according to a person familiar with reports on the matter.
Today, the Air Force is buying hundreds of Reaper drones, a newer model, whose video feeds could be intercepted in much the same way as with the Predators, according to people familiar with the matter. A Reaper costs between $10 million and $12 million each and is faster and better armed than the Predator. General Atomics expects the Air Force to buy as many as 375 Reapers.
Additional Insights from CBS News Beyond Wall Street Journal
The implications of the Predator's unencrypted transmissions have been known in military circles for a long time. An October 1999 presentation given at the Air Force's School of Advanced Airpower Studies in Alabama noted “the Predator UAV is designed to operate with unencrypted data links.”
A 1996 briefing by Paul Kaminski, an undersecretary of defense for acquisition and technology, may offer a hint about how the Iraqi's interception was done. Kaminski said that the military had turned to commercial satellites – “Hughes is the primary provider of direct (satellite) TV that you can buy in the United States, and that's the technology we're leveraging off of” – to share feeds from Predator drones.
Journal: Real Estate Crash, Internet Censors, & Commons
Commercial Intelligence
The crash in real estate among the very rich who were NOT part of the Wall Street cabal is a fine indicator of “relative valuations.” Bottom line: Everything is worth 50% less now in “real dollars,” and will be worth even less as the US dollar continues to devalue.
In other news of idiocy run amok, we have the Austrlian government bent on censoring the Internet–that's right up there with those who want to be able to close down the US Internet “in case of emergency”.
Australia will try to censor the Internet
THE AUSTRALIAN GOVERNMENT has decided that the land Down Under will become the only Western Democracy to attempt to censor the Internet.
Despite warnings that the government is committing political suicide and the technology will not work, the Rudd government is screaming for the same controls over its citizens as Communist China.
It is insisting that filtering a blacklist of banned sites will be accurate and won't slow down the Internet.
Meanwhile, signs of Intelligent Life still active:
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Worth a Look: Contractors in Stability Operations
10 Security, 10 Transnational Crime, Commerce, Commercial Intelligence, Worth A LookStability Operations for Dummies: The Role of the Prvate Sector in Iraq (YouTube Briefing)
Doug Brooks, founding President of the International Peace Operations Association (IPOA) has a video circulating that offers the soft sales pitch for outsourcing “contingency support.” It is all positive and completely avoids all of the negatives, such as:
1. Pillaging and disrupting existing intelligence and special operations ranks by incentivizing early retirement.
2. Cost 3x to 10X that of a uniformed or civil service source.
3. Profit motive rather than mission motive.
4. Pretends contractor mistakes are not politically accountable.
5. Pretends contractors actually favor low-cost locals (which radically reduces overhead profits)
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