Yoda: Afghan’s Rural Green Project

03 Environmental Degradation, 08 Wild Cards, Ethics, Government

yoda with light saberOne of the poorest regions in Afghanistan is teaching the world about sustainability

The Rural Green Environment Organization is entirely rewriting the environmental narrative for 90 villages and 40,000 people in Badakhshan, Afghanistan. The region has endured decades of conflict, insecurity and the overharvesting of natural resources. What was once a region battered by conflict and environmental degradation is now flourishing.

Neal Rauhauser: Russian Information Operations The Menace of Unreality – How the Kremlin Weaponizes Information, Culture and Money

06 Russia, Advanced Cyber/IO, IO Deeds of War
Neal Rauhauser
Neal Rauhauser

The Menace of Unreality: How the Kremlim Weaponizes Information, Culture and Money covers the Kremlin's methods and motives as they spread the influence modern Russia, rightly called a mafia state. The concept of “Operations Psychological”, as defined by Valery Gerasimov, Chief of the General Staff of the Armed Forces of Russia, plays a prominent role in these efforts. The impatient will want to skip to the Recommendations section on page 40; the simple, clear prescriptions may motivate paging back to understand more of the thinking behind them. Arab Spring has come and gone, ISIS is what it is, and the true challenge for the west in the 21st century is this next evolution of a network threat, an area in which the Russians vastly outperform the U.S.

Berto Jongman: Pentagon Weapons Vulnerable to Open Internet Connections for Performance Monitoring

IO Impotency

berto smallPentagon's Online Habits Render US Weapons Info Highly Vulnerable

The Pentagon's longstanding practice of connecting networks, equipment, and weapons to the open Internet has unintentionally created major vulnerabilities throughout the Defense Department.

The strategy was supposed to facilitate the collection of performance data to help design new weapons and monitor equipment remotely, among other benefits. Instead, it has jeopardized Pentagon networks and much of what the defense industry has developed over several decades.

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Sepp Hasslberger: Electrostatic Charges Reverse Monsanto Genetic Engineering — But Congress Still Immunizing Monsanto from Legal Redress

01 Agriculture
Sepp Hasslberger
Sepp Hasslberger

It is apparently possible to reverse genetic modifications – by simply exposing seeds to a static electric field for some time before germination and growth. The recently added genetic traits will vanish, giving way to a plant or animal close to its origins…

Electrostatic Zapping of Seeds & Embroyos

The “Primeval Code” is restored, overcoming genetic engineering.

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Stephen E. Arnold: Web Crawling ToolKit

IO Tools
Stephen E. Arnold
Stephen E. Arnold

Short Honk: Crawl the Web at Scale

Short honk: I read “Aduana: Link Analysis to Crawl the Web at Scale.” The write up explains an open source project which can copy content “dispersed all over the Web.” Keep in mind that the approach focuses primarily on text. Aduana is a special back end for the developer’s tool for speeding up crawls which is built on top of a data management system. Read more.

Direct to Tool: Scrapinghub Platform

Chuck Spinney: Col Pat Lang Provides Strategy on Syria — For Adults with Intelligence and Integrity…

04 Inter-State Conflict, 05 Civil War, 08 Wild Cards, 09 Terrorism, IO Deeds of War, Officers Call
Chuck Spinney
Chuck Spinney

Below at the close of this excellent opinion piece by Pat Lang is sensible prescription for shaping a schwerpunkt in so-called Global War on Terror or GWOT.  Lang cuts thru the Gordian Knot of inwardly focused contradictions that are overloading and paralyzing America’s grand strategy* in the Syrian Civil War and turning our country into a international laughing stock on steroids.

Col Pat Lang, USA (Ret)
Col Pat Lang, USA (Ret)

Pat Lang's conclusion brought forward:

What to do?-  I was asked today to state what I think should be done:

* Accept the truth that we destroyed the Iraqi state and from that act of vandalism all present chaos in that country derives.

* Don't do it again in Syria.

Continue reading “Chuck Spinney: Col Pat Lang Provides Strategy on Syria — For Adults with Intelligence and Integrity…”