Communities of Practice – Page 900 – Public Intelligence Blog

2013/01/23

NIGHTWATCH: Weak Signal from Algeria – Anti-US Forces Up Their Game

04 Inter-State Conflict, 05 Civil War, 07 Other Atrocities, 08 Wild Cards, 09 Justice, 09 Terrorism, 10 Security, 11 Society, Civil Society, Government, Military

Algeria-US: Update. A senior Algerian official said that one of the terrorists captured at the In Amenas gas plant said under interrogation that some of the dead Egyptian terrorists also participated in the attack on the US Consulate in Benghazi last year. Three terrorists are in custody.

The official said the terrorists staged in southern Libya with arms purchased in Tripoli, Libya. He also said, “This is the result of the Arab Spring…. I hope the Americans are conscious of this.”

Comment: There is no way to corroborate the detainee's statement. What is worth noting is that the Algerian official's statements help explain why the Algerians might have had few qualms about assaulting the terrorists, despite the risk to foreigners. The Algerian government expects more attacks and the outcome will probably not be much different for foreigners.

The government has opposed US policy in the Arab world, especially the overthrow of the Qadhafi government. Some officials are making it very clear they hold American policy ultimately responsible for the gas plant attack in Algeria, the invasion of northern Mali by Islamist fighters and future attacks to come.

Americans working in Algeria are at increased risk from terrorists. Moreover, their safety does not appear to be a major factor in government planning for rescue operations.

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2013/01/222013/01/22

Penguin: Why is West Point Studying Domestic Movements? Led By an Israeli?

07 Other Atrocities, 09 Terrorism, Corruption, Government, Law Enforcement, Military

(1) Why is West Point in the business of studying the domestic activities of Americans?

(2) Why is such an effort spearheaded by an Israeli?

(3) Is it any wonder America's good old boys do not trust their own government?

Challengers from the Sidelines: Understanding America’s Violent Far-Right

Arie Perliger

West Point Combatting Terrorism Centrer, January 15, 2013

In the last few years, and especially since 2007, there has been a dramatic rise in the number of attacks and violent plots originating from individuals and groups who self-identify with the far-right of American politics. These incidents cause many to wonder whether these are isolated attacks, an increasing trend, part of increasing societal violence, or attributable to some other condition. To date, however, there has been limited systematic documentation and analysis of incidents of American domestic violence.

This study provides a conceptual foundation for understanding different far-right groups and then presents the empirical analysis of violent incidents to identify those perpetrating attacks and their associated trends. Through a comprehensive look at the data, this study addresses three core questions:

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2013/01/222013/01/22

SmartPlanet: World Unemployment Rising, Western World Unemployment Has Global Impact

03 Economy, Civil Society, Commerce, Ineptitude

World unemployment rate on the rise

By Tyler Falk | January 22, 2013, 7:06 AM PST

Despite two consecutive years of falling global unemployment, the number of jobless is once again on the rise. And projections for future years aren’t looking much better.

According to a new report from the International Labour Organization, the global unemployment rate in 2012 rose to 5.9 percent of the workforce, increasing by 4.2 million people. Over 197 million people are now considered unemployed.

“An uncertain economic outlook, and the inadequacy of policy to counter this, has weakened aggregate demand, holding back investment and hiring,” said ILO Director-General Guy Ryder. “This has prolonged the labour market slump in many countries, lowering job creation and increasing unemployment duration even in some countries that previously had low unemployment and dynamic labour markets.”

Much of the increase can be blamed on rising unemployment in advanced economies.

The job market is particularly bad for workers under 24, as 12.6 percent are unemployed. And while the situation is expected to improve for young people in advanced economies, it’s only projected to worsen in emerging economies in Eastern Europe, East and Southeast Asia and the Middle East.

But, overall, a rising middle class in emerging economies should help soften the unemployment blow but not enough to prevent rising unemployment in the coming years.

So what can governments do?

“[M]any of the new jobs require skills that jobseekers do not have,” Ryder added. “Governments should step up efforts to support skills and retraining activities in order to address such mismatches which particularly affect young people.”

The report also noted that 39 million people left the labor market last year.

Read the full report here.

2013/01/22

SchwartzReport: Genetic Modification of Crops Insanely Criminal — and Chemicalization of Agricultural Production Contributing to Climate Change

01 Agriculture, 07 Health, Commerce, Corruption, Idiocy

Regulators Discover a Hidden Viral Gene in Commercial GMO Crops
JONATHAN LATHAM and ALLISON WILSON – Independent Science News

The more I read about the GMO controversy the more it appears to be a story of commercializing a new technology before it was really understood, leaving us vulnerable to unintended consequences. Here is an example of what I mean.

The Agricultural Fulcrum: Better Food, Better Climate
Atlantic

As long as we see ourselves as something apart from the great cycles of nature, which is a fundamental assumption of our energy and agriculture sectors, we will destroy the earth and ourselves. There is an alternative.

2013/01/212013/01/21

Yoda: There Is No Publishing Industry [This Has HUGE Implications for Education, Intelligence & Research]

Commerce, Ineptitude, IO Impotency

In the tar pit, the mammoths are.

There Is No Publishing Industry

All models are wrong, some models are useful – statistician George Box

The mental model we share of this thing we call the publishing industry is no longer useful. Most of us think of the publishing industry’s product as “books”. That’s like thinking that Amazon sells two products, bits and cardboard boxes. Amazon ships stuff in cardboard boxes. It’s what’s inside the box that you are buying. Likewise, it’s the information contained in the bits that you are buying when you buy a digital product from Amazon.

Physical books were never really the publishing industry’s product. It was always the stories, ideas, and information contained in the books. Now that there are competing digital containers for almost everything that has traditionally been delivered via physical books, it is imperative that we take a hard look at the different industries which were hidden from view by our once-useful model of the publishing industry. Because these industries are moving to the digital world at vastly different rates and to very different digital containers: ebooks, apps, and the web. In my terminology, an app is a digital container that promotes user interaction with content rather than linear reading; an ebook is a self-contained reading unit mostly without external links; and the defining feature of the web is external linking. To understand the future of publishing, we have to let go of the idea of “the publishing industry” and look at its products based on the needs they fulfill.

The first [of four] industry to begin disappearing from the print world was the database packaging industry. Directories, encyclopedias, and dictionaries are well on their way to extinction in the print world. The mass-market products in this industry have moved almost entirely to the web. A few of the higher-end products have moved to specialized apps. Because this industry was always peripheral to the main business, many folks in publishing didn’t fully comprehend the implications of this change: some products that were previously only available as physical books had a natural affinity to a different form and business model.

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2013/01/212013/01/21

Jon Meacham: America Treading Water

Cultural Intelligence, Government

Speaking the the O'Reailly Show at Fox:

America is treading water.

Neither the President nor Congress nor the public are ready to make hard choices.

Absent a restoration of the middle class, this Presidency will be unremarkable.

Books by Jon Meacham:

2012 Thomas Jefferson: The Art of Power

2009 American Lion: Andrew Jackson in the White House

2007 American Gospel: God, the Founding Fathers, and the Making of a Nation [Review by Robert Steele]

2004 Franklin and Winston: An Intimate Portrait of an Epic Friendship

2003 Voices in Our Blood: Americ's Best on the Civil Rights Movement

Worth a Look: Book Review Lists (Positive Future-Oriented)

2013/01/212013/01/21

Tom Atlee: Feedback Dynamics in Climate and Society

Civil Society, Cultural Intelligence, Earth Intelligence

Feedback dynamics in climate and society

In the debate over climate change, I find myself paying more attention to authorities who highlight important positive feedback loops through which a warming atmosphere triggers increased climate change. Their troubling scenarios come not from innate pessimism but from paying attention to system dynamics.

A feedback loop is a systemic dynamic through which outputs re-enter the system, magnifying (positive feedback) or balancing (negative feedback) the conditions in the system. For a positive feedback loop, consider a wealthy person who donates to a candidate and gets legislation favorable to his business, so that he can make more money to support candidates who pass favorable legislation, etc. His investments (output) generate returns (input) which he reinvests (output) ad infinitum, steadily increasing his stock of money as he repeats this feedback process.

Feedback dynamics have a powerful impact shaping what happens next in a system. To the extent we understand the feedback dynamics, we gain insight into what will happen next in a system and, perhaps most importantly, what we might do about it.

So here are four major positive feedback dynamics impacting the rate of climate change. They involve reflective ice, methane, oil reserves, and trees, and they cause the atmosphere to continue to warm faster than we would expect if we didn't take them into account.

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