Journal ISSN 1078-1935 – Page 1518 – Public Intelligence Blog

2014/05/172014/05/17

SchwartzReport: Paul Krugman on Political Implosion in America — Allegiance to False Doctrines, Servant to Big Money — Is Civil War Coming to the USA?

Corruption, Cultural Intelligence, Government, Idiocy, Peace Intelligence

I have been thinking about the issues Paul Krugman addresses all this week. Is it possible for an entire political party to continue to maintain a fantasy that serves their corporate masters in the face of over-whelming facts and personal experience? The only precedent I can think of is slavery, and it took a war to end it as a viable political position, even as it continues to exercise considerable influence! over a large part of the electorate.

Points of No Return
PAUL KRUGMAN, Nobel Laureate – Op-Ed Columnist – The New York Times

Recently two research teams, working independently and using different methods, reached an alarming conclusion: The West Antarctic ice sheet is doomed. The sheet’s slide into the ocean, and the resulting sharp rise in sea levels, will probably happen slowly. But it’s irreversible. Even if we took drastic action to limit global warming right now, this particular process of environmental change has reached a point of no return.

Meanwhile, Senator Marco Rubio of Florida – much of whose state is now fated to sink beneath the waves – weighed in on climate change. Some readers may recall that in 2012 Mr. Rubio, asked how old he believed the earth to be, replied ‘I’m not a scientist, man.” This time, however, he confidently declared the overwhelming scientific consensus on climate change false, although in a later interview he was unable to cite any sources for his skepticism.

So why would the senator make such a statement? The answer is that like that ice sheet, his party’s intellectual evolution (or maybe more accurately, its devolution) has reached a point of no return, in which allegiance to false doctrines has become a crucial badge of identity.

Read full article.

2014/05/162014/05/16

American Veterans May Become American Guerrillas — Police Planning & Arming Against US Veterans

05 Civil War, 07 Other Atrocities, 09 Justice, 10 Security, 11 Society, Civil Society, Corruption, DHS, Government, Idiocy, IO Deeds of War, Law Enforcement, Military

American Vets May Become American Guerrillas When the SHTF in the USA

Despite what seems like an endless parade of stories about federal government stupidity and malfeasance repetitively emerging over years and decades, there are a few in government who have brains, who think and connect the dots, at least in connection to the ever enlarging presence of American veterans who know tactics and strategy and how to make and use weapons. Such thinkers have, as part of their responsibility to look after the interests of their elite 1% masters, surely recognized, in light of the developments mentioned in this article, the threat American veterans trained in warfare may represent to their elite master's interests as the economy implodes due to their master's machinations:

“In an interview with Fox 59, a Morgan County, Indiana Police Sergeant admits that the increasing militarization of domestic police departments is partly to deal with returning veterans who are now seen as a homegrown terror threat. Sgt. Dan Downing of the Morgan County Sheriff’s Department states, “When I first started we really didn’t have the violence that we see today,” adding, “The weaponry is totally different now that it was in the beginning of my career, plus, you have a lot of people who are coming out of the military that have the ability and knowledge to build IEDs and to defeat law enforcement techniques…Indiana seems to be a major trial balloon for the militarization of law enforcement given that the Indiana National Guard has also just purchased two military UH-72 Lakota helicopters which will also be used by local police and the DHS for “homeland security missions”. Downing’s claim that armored tanks are necessary to deal with violent crime doesn’t jive with actual statistics which suggest that violent crime is in fact on the decrease.

Continue reading “American Veterans May Become American Guerrillas — Police Planning & Arming Against US Veterans”

2014/05/162014/05/16

Chuck Spinney: William Grieder on US Merchants of Death Profiteering on the Ukraine

04 Inter-State Conflict, 05 Civil War, 10 Transnational Crime, Commerce, Corruption, Government, Military, Peace Intelligence

‘Merchants of Death’ Could Make a Lot of Money Off a War in Ukraine

William Greider, thenation.com, May 13, 2014 – 3:57 PM ET

If you’re wondering why some US politicians are so hot for war in the Ukraine, think “merchants of death.” At the height of the antiwar movement, that was nasty label some of us applied to Lockheed Martin, Boeing and other major manufacturers of high-tech war-fighting equipment—planes, tanks, missiles, whatever does the job. When the drums of war are sounding in some distant land, these the weapons makers naturally smell sales opportunities.

Trouble in Ukraine has aroused the same ambitions and hawkish politicians have picked up the ball and are running with it. They are demanding that the US government send military stuff to Kiev to hold off threatening Russians (our favorite bad guys). The hawks are portraying President Obama as a wimp who’s insufficiently bellicose. But the president is so far playing a cool hand. He has been getting us out of two wars. He’s pretty sure the people don’t want another one.

In fact, neutral historians may someday conclude that it was the United States who stirred up the trouble in the Ukraine, inadvertently if not intentionally, and that US arms makers played an important supporting role. When the Cold War ended in 1991, these companies saw a promising new market opening for their stuff—the newly liberated Soviet satellites in Eastern Europe. Let’s expand NATO! The manufacturers lobbied policy makers in Washington and courted governments of post-Soviet nations as potential customers.

Bill Clinton decided to do it, cheered on by the arms merchants. Why is nobody talking about that? Because It might sound unpatriotic. And the media love bang-bang, even if the cause is stupid.

Continue reading “Chuck Spinney: William Grieder on US Merchants of Death Profiteering on the Ukraine”

2014/05/162014/05/16

Yoda: Science of Super (Information) Spreaders

Cultural Intelligence

The Emerging Science of Superspreaders (And How to Tell If You're One Of Them)

Nobody has figured out how to spot the most influential spreaders of information in a real-world network. Now that looks set to change with important implications, not least for the superspreaders themselves.

EXTRACT

But there’s a problem. Social networks are so complex that network scientists have never been able to test their ideas in the real world—it has always been too difficult to reconstruct the exact structure of Twitter or Facebook networks, for example. Instead, they’ve created models that mimic real networks in certain ways and tested their ideas on these instead.

But there is growing evidence that information does not spread through real networks in the same way as it does through these idealised ones. People tend to pass on information only when they are interested in a topic and when they are active, factors that are hard to take into account in a purely topological model of a network.

So the question of how to find the superspreaders remains open. That looks set to change thanks to the work of Sen Pei at Beihang University in Beijing and a few pals who have performed the first study of superspreaders on real networks.

Continue reading “Yoda: Science of Super (Information) Spreaders”

2014/05/162014/05/16

Marcus Aurelius: CYBER School Modeled on RANGER School? But What Is Cyber?

Advanced Cyber/IO

Interesting concept, although I'm not sure how practical it is.

Towards a Cyber Leader Course Modeled on Army Ranger School
By Gregory Conti, Michael Weigand, Ed Skoudis, David Raymond, Thomas Cook and Todd Arnold

Small Wars Journal | Apr 18 2014 – 11:31am

Since 1950, the U.S. Army Ranger School has garnered a well-earned reputation as one of the most demanding military schools in the world. Graduates have served with distinction in special operations units including the Ranger Regiment and Special Operations Command as well as line units throughout the Army. With the emergence of cyberspace as an operational domain and the critical shortage of technically and operationally competent cyber[i] leaders, the time has come to create a U.S. Army Cyber Leader Course of equal intensity, reputation, and similar duration,[ii] but focused on cyber operations (see Figure 1). This article presents a model for the creation of such a school, one that goes far beyond just a tough classroom experience by using tactical close-access missions as a core component. What we propose is unique, demanding, immersive, and fills a necessary gap in Army cyber leader development. This article is a condensed form of a more detailed analysis and description of the proposed Army Cyber Leader Course.

PDF (14 Pages): Army Cyber Leader Course Concept SWJ

Continue reading “Marcus Aurelius: CYBER School Modeled on RANGER School? But What Is Cyber?”

2014/05/162014/05/16

NIGHTWATCH: Afghanistan Election Results, US Interference in Election, Abdullah is 100% Tajik and 100% Funded by Iran

Cultural Intelligence, Peace Intelligence

Afghanistan: Update. The Independent Election Commission posted the final results of the first round of the presidential election. The top two candidates are Dr. Abdullah, who received 45% of the votes and Ashraf Ghani Ahmadzai who received 31.56%.

The Commission indicated that 7 million people voted, or about 58% of the registered voters.

Comment: An analysis of provincial results shows Afghanistan remains strongly polarized, based on tribal allegiances, which also means region. That judgment should surprise no one.

Dr. Abdullah, a Tajik with Pashtun blood, won an outright majority in 15 provinces, all but one of them in the Tajik and Uzbek north and in the Hazara regions of central Afghanistan. In the south he won by a cleear majority only in Ghazni Province.

Ashraf Ghani won nine provinces outright; seven of them are in the Pashtun region of the south. However, two other Pashtun candidates prevented him from making a stronger showing. The Pashtuns remain fractured and fractious so that their most appealing candidate came in a distant second. They have a second chance in the run-off election, but the Taliban spring offensive will help ensure they will not win the presidency.

Continue reading “NIGHTWATCH: Afghanistan Election Results, US Interference in Election, Abdullah is 100% Tajik and 100% Funded by Iran”

2014/05/152014/05/15

Yoda: Hundreds Protest FCC Dismissal of Net Neutrality

Corruption, Government, Idiocy, IO Impotency

Neutrality not...

Hundreds protest outside FCC net neutrality hearing

One activist calls FCC's proposal “a nail in the coffin” for American innovation.

WASHINGTON, DC—As the Federal Communications Commission was considering new net neutrality rules, hundreds of protesters gathered outside the meeting Thursday morning to protest FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler's proposal.

Advocacy organizations like Free Press argued that Wheeler's proposal, discussed in greater detail in this post, “has the potential to stop the flow of a free and open Internet.”

Others at the rally, like Scott Beiban, a Philadelphia-based artist and technologist, told us, “As an artist making use of innovations like cryptocurrency, I find net neutrality to be a very important issue. If the FCC allows companies like Comcast and Time Warner to dictate the means by which information flows, it will be a nail in the coffin for American innovation.”

“We work at a technology company for schools and nonprofits,” Vanessa Holub and Elizabeth Rose, of Baltimore-based information technology services company Civilization Systems, told us. “Our clients can't afford to have a two-tiered system. Independent news agencies and poor school kids would feel the brunt of this attack.”

Those wanting to express their arguments against (or support for) the FCC proposal can submit comments to the FCC by going here and clicking on the link to the left of the words, “Protecting and Promoting the Open Internet.”

Read full article.