Collaboration Zones – Page 1269 – Public Intelligence Blog

An Afghan man receives phone call on his mobile phone on a street in Kabul — Click on Image to Enlarge

By Chris Gayomali on May 12, 2011

TechLand (Time)

Due to a strict adherence to Sharia law, the Taliban have long shunned modern technology, particularly personal televisions and computers. But in the wake of a recent offensive campaign in the Afghan city of Kandahar, the group has emerged on a new, if unlikely, modern platform: Twitter.

At the the time of writing this, the account in question (@alemarahweb) has 363 followers. Most of the messages are broadcasted in the militant sect's native Pashto. But, as the Guardian points out, on early Thursday morning a message that read in English was sent across the Twitter-sphere. Like most of the tweets posted, the message concerned exaggerated reports of “strikes against the ‘infidel forces'” that typically feature links back to The Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan website, a frequently relocated Web headquarters for the splintered Taliban's makeshift government.

PHOTOS: Inside bin Laden's lair

The account also follows 12 other users (at least at the time of writing this), notably @Afghantim, a “USAF Logistics Readiness Officer currently deployed as a combat advisor to the Afghan Army,” and numerous Afghani news and development groups. The Guardian surmises this to be a practice of the old axiom “keep your friends close but your enemies closer.” (More on Time.com: See the 140 best Twitter feeds)

The emergence of Twitter has consistently been one of the key stories concerning the revolutions in Egypt and other uprisings. And it has proven, time and time again, pivotal to community leaders for organizing unified protests on a massive scale. The adoption of social media by a decentralized group like the Taliban is perhaps an acknowledgement of the platform's communicative potential, whether that be for strategic or merely propaganda purposes.

2011/05/122011/05/12

Secrecy News: F-35 “True Costs” Disclosed

03 Economy, 07 Other Atrocities, 09 Justice, 10 Security, 11 Society, Advanced Cyber/IO, Commerce, Commercial Intelligence, Corruption, Military, Officers Call, Peace Intelligence

F-35 SELECTED ACQUISITION REPORT DISCLOSED

The latest annual report to Congress (pdf) on the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter Program details the soaring costs and deferred production schedule associated with the program. The report, which has not been publicly released, outlines total program costs from last year as well as per-aircraft costs and planned annual spending rates.

It's “a useful primer on the Pentagon's most expensive weapons program,” said one close observer of defense procurement.

A copy was obtained by Secrecy News. See the 2010 Selected Acquisition Report (SAR) for the F-35, April 2011.

Phi Beta Iota: Congress has abdicated its Article 1 responsibilities across the board, but particularly with respect to war and the cost of war. Coincident with the insanity of the US Intelligence Community claiming it can restrict the use of unclassified information in legal proceedings (See Drake Leak Case), what we have is a government that is “out of control” and incurring costs “in our name” that are unaffordable and often immoral as well as illegal. Transparency of true costs is a major foundation for sane democratic policies.

2011/05/112011/05/11

Worth a Look: Sick Fish in the Gulf of Mexico

03 Environmental Degradation, 07 Health, Advanced Cyber/IO, Civil Society, Earth Intelligence, Worth A Look

Sick fish in Gulf are alarming scientists

Unusual number a ‘huge red flag' to scientists, fishermen

pnj.com, May 8, 2011

Red snapper with abnormal stripes caught by a local commercial fisherman. Scientists are seeing a growing number of Gulf fish with lesions and other health problems and are conducting tests to determine whether they are related to the BP oil spill. / Special to the News Journal

Read full article….

Phi Beta Iota: If we spent just half of the current US secret intelligence budget of $80 billion a year on monitoring the Earth and creating a real-time grid for establishing the true cost of all products, services, and events (such as the Gulf oil disaster), we would be much more likely to create a prosperous world at peace. The militarization of “security” may well be–along with the industrialization of agriculture–two of the greatest crimes against humanity in modern times.

2011/05/112011/05/11

Worth a Look: Soldiers Breathing Bioactive Metals

07 Health, 07 Other Atrocities, Advanced Cyber/IO, Earth Intelligence, Military, Officers Call, Peace Intelligence, Worth A Look

What harmful element were found in war-zone dust

USA Today, 11 May 2011

Sand is made up of pure silica, but deserts also include minerals that have been deposited by long-gone lakes, ground water, wind and pollution. Navy Capt. Mark Lyles' research team found 37 elements in samples of dust from Iraq and Kuwait, including 15 bioactive metals that are known to cause or have been linked to serious health effects with short- and long-term exposure, according to the Environmental Protection Agency.

Lyle's team measured settled dust, which servicemembers breathe when it rises into the air during a dust storm. Though the government has standards for air pollution that can contain the following elements, there are no standards for exposures to toxic elements in settled dust. The metals Lyle's team found include:

Continue reading “Worth a Look: Soldiers Breathing Bioactive Metals”

2011/05/11

Uniting the Left–With the Wrong Question As Usual

11 Society, Cultural Intelligence, IO Sense-Making

Politics

The big question: What story about America’s future can unite the U.S. left?

David Roberts, 9 May 2011

grist: a beacon in the smog

U.S. politics is at an interesting inflection point.

On one side, the American right grows ever more homogeneous: ethnically, socioculturally, and ideologically. On the other, the American left is an unwieldy coalition of minorities, unions, single working mothers, Blue Dogs, feminists, young people, knowledge workers, culture and entertainment elites, scientists, GLBT folks, environmentalists, social justice groups, Jews, Muslims, atheists, moderates, socialists … even Joe Lieberman for a while.

Precisely because it is homogeneous, the right is intense. There is no political force more potent than a privileged class in the process of losing its privilege. The right base sees itself as an Us beset on all sides by Thems; cries Michele Bachmann, “are we going to take our country back?” The status quo does not go gentle into that good night. The right speaks with a common voice, around a core set of narratives: small government, big military, low taxes, family values. Most importantly, they organize, vote, and donate.

The left, by contrast, is a contentious coalition of Thems, speaking with a cacophony of voices, often at cross purposes, perpetually less than the sum of its parts. Make no mistake: if that coalition can hold together, it will win in the end. It's demographic destiny: The U.S. is becoming more diverse, less religious, more socially liberal, less nuclear-family, and more urban. And it's happening faster than predicted. We're on our way to an America with more Thems than Us's.

Read complete article and call for inputs….

Phi Beta Iota: The author misses the incoherence of the right on substance. And this is, for the left, the wrong question, as usual. The correct question is: America the Beautiful is the original vision, the vision lost. What narrative can bring us all back together and restore the Republic, Of, By, and For all of the people all of the time?

2011/05/102011/05/10

Secrecy News: ODNI Tools for Data Fusion & Analysis

Corruption, Cultural Intelligence, Government, IO Impotency, Officers Call, Policies

ODNI DESCRIBES EMERGING TOOLS FOR DATA FUSION, ANALYSIS

Several intelligence community initiatives to develop improved tools for data search, analysis and fusion were described in the latest report to Congress (pdf) from the Office of the Director of National Intelligence on data mining.

A new program called DataSphere is intended “to aid in the discovery of unknown terrorism relationships and the identification of previously undetected terrorist and terrorism information” through analysis of communication networks and travel patterns.

A continuing program called Catalyst seems to be a glorified search engine that “will enable data fusion/analytic programs to share disparate repositories with each other, to disambiguate and cross-correlate the different agencies' holdings, and to discover and visualize relationship/network links, geospatial patterns, temporal patterns and related correlations.”

Although these and other initiatives do not yet constitute or engage in “data mining,” they were described in the new report “in the interest of transparency,” ODNI said. See “2010 Data Mining Report,” Office of the Director of National Intelligence, April 2011.

Comment and Two Complex Links Below the Line

Continue reading “Secrecy News: ODNI Tools for Data Fusion & Analysis”

2011/05/102011/05/10

Ideological Underpinnings of the “Great Society”

03 Economy, 07 Other Atrocities, 11 Society, Corruption, Cultural Intelligence, Government

Ideological Underpinnings of the “Great Society”

By Robert Higgs

Campaign for Liberty, 05/10/11

[The Freeman (March 2011). An MP3 audio file of this article, narrated by Steven Ng, is available for download.]

The surge of federal economic interventions that occurred during Lyndon B. Johnson's presidency — the much-ballyhooed Great Society, whose centerpiece was the War on Poverty — differed from the four preceding surges, each of which had been sparked by war or economic depression. No national emergency prevailed when Johnson took office following John F. Kennedy's assassination on November 22, 1963. The nation was not engaged in a major shooting war, and the economy was on the mend after the mild recession of 1960-61. For the most part, the Great Society represented simply the culmination of economic, political, and intellectual developments stretching back as far as the 19th century.