Journal ISSN 1078-1935 – Page 1569 – Public Intelligence Blog

2014/03/262014/03/26

Mother Jones: Laos Bombing – $17M a Day, 2.5 Million Tons of Bombs, True Cost Just Now Becoming Known…

04 Inter-State Conflict, 07 Other Atrocities, 08 Wild Cards, Government, Military

Watch the US Drop 2.5 Million Tons of Bombs on Laos

Picturing the deadly legacy of America's secret war in the world's most bombed-out country

Between 1964 and 1973, the United States dropped around 2.5 million tons of bombs on Laos. While the American public was focused on the war in neighboring Vietnam, the US military was waging a devastating covert campaign to cut off North Vietnamese supply lines through the small Southeast Asian country.

The nearly 600,000 bombing runs delivered a staggering amount of explosives: The equivalent of a planeload of bombs every eight minutes for nine years, or a ton of bombs for every person in the country—more than what American planes unloaded on Germany and Japan combined during World War II. Laos remains, per capita, the most heavily bombed country on earth.

The map above, created by photographer Jerry Redfern, provides another view of the massive scale of the bombing. Each point on the map corresponds to one US bombing mission starting in October 1965; multiple planes often flew on missions.

The unfinished aftermath of the air campaign is the subject of Redfern and Karen Coates' new book, Eternal Harvest: The Legacy of American Bombs in Laos. This stunning book, seven years in the making, documents how the secret air war is still claiming lives more than four decades after it ended.

More than 100 Laotians fall victim to unexploded cluster bombs annually, delayed casualties of Operation Barrel Roll and Operation Steel Tiger, which dropped 270 million cluster bomblets. Packed by the dozens or hundreds in canisters, cluster bombs are designed to open in midair, scattering small explosives across a wide radius. Yet not all of them detonated, and today, 80 million live bomblets lurk under Laos' soil.

Cleaning up the unexploded ordnance (UXO) has been agonizingly slow. In January, Congress approved $12 million for UXO clearance and related aid in Laos. In comparison, the bombing cost the United States spent $17 million a day in inflation-adjusted dollars.

Below, a selection of Redfern's photographs from Eternal Harvest. Learn more about his and Coates' work at their website.

See More Photographs.

2014/03/262014/03/26

Yoda: Goats Smarter, Also Crows, Pigs, and Dogs….

Earth Intelligence

Human tests do not test goat intelligence, they test goat abilities to dumb down to human levels.

Goats are apparently smarter than anyone thought

Researchers found that goats can learn to solve complicated tasks quickly and can remember the solutions they’ve learned for 10 months or more.

Science is having to constantly reevaluate how we look at animal intelligence. Recent evidence has shown that crows, pigs and dogs, for example, are even more intelligent than previously believed.

Most recently, researchers at Queen Mary University of London have found that goats can learn to solve complicated tasks quickly and can remember the solutions they’ve learned for 10 months or more. Scientists believe that this may explain the animal’s ability to adapt to harsh environments.

Published in the March 26th edition of the journal Frontiers in Zoology, the researchers found that the goats could be taught to accomplish complicated tasks in order to obtain rewards. The goats were taught to pull a lever with their mouths and release it in order to access food in a box.

Read full article.

2014/03/262014/05/13

Internet Society of NY: Gamifying Activism

Cultural Intelligence, Gift Intelligence

Media artist Josephine Dorado (and friend of ISOC-NY) has developed an online game and mobile app to promote activism.

reACTor is a location-based mobile gaming app that connects news with social action”(working title, based on fractor.org) is an initiative to create a mobile game that allows users to “play the news” — players would be shown the news 1000 feet around them (or other specified distance), and then are presented with social actions and volunteer opportunities associated with that news.

2014/03/262014/03/26

Jean Lievens: The Dead Are Wealthier Than the Living – Capital in the 21st Century – “The pasts tends to devour the future.”

Commercial Intelligence, Cultural Intelligence

The Dead Are Wealthier Than the Living – Capital in the 21st Century

Patrimonial capitalism—and the landed or urban gentry living off of inherited wealth—was dealt a mortal blow by the Great Depression and World Wars. But it’s making a comeback, and the only way to stop it might be a worldwide tax on capital.

EXTRACT:

Why is capital re-establishing dominance over income? Because, Piketty writes, r > g.

In plain English: The return on capital (r) almost always exceeds economic growth (g). Piketty calls r > g an “inequality” rather than a formula because it isn’t “an absolute logical necessity.” Rather, it’s “the result of a confluence of forces, each largely independent of the others.” These include demographics (a rapidly growing population boosts g); the extent to which a country’s economy has matured (China has much higher g than the U.S. and Western Europe because it’s still catching up); and various “technological, psychological, social, and cultural factors” (all of which can cause r to fall). Typically, r is four to five times g, but the ratio gets larger as capital accumulates across generations. The dead—though worse off in most obvious respects than the rest of us—are wealthier than the living. “The past,” Piketty writes, “tends to devour the future.”

Read full article.

2014/03/262014/03/26

Patrick Meier: Humanitarians Using UAVs for Post Disaster Recovery

Drones & UAVs, Geospatial

Humanitarians Using UAVs for Post Disaster Recovery

I recently connected with senseFly’s Adam Klaptocz who founded the non-profit group DroneAdventures to promote humanitarian uses of UAVs. I first came across Adam’s efforts last year when reading about his good work in Haiti, which demonstrated the unique role that UAV technology & imagery can play in post-disaster contexts. DroneAdventures has also been active in Japan and Peru. In the coming months, the team will also be working on “aerial archeology” projects in Turkey and Egypt. When Adam emailed me last week, he and his team had just returned from yet another flying mission, this time in the Philippines. I’ll be meeting up with Adam in a couple weeks to learn more about their recent adventures. In the meantime, here’s a quick recap of what they were up to in the Philippines this month.

Read full article.

2014/03/262014/03/26

Marcus Aurelius: Can the Army [CSA] Handle the Truth? Includes Copy of SSI Monograph “Closing the Candor Chasm”

Cultural Intelligence, Ethics, Military

Article below appeared in last week's Army Times. Paper to which article refers attached; I've been carrying a hardcopy in my rucksack for weeks. Author works for the Undersecretary of the Army. Many of us feel that the Army absolutely cannot deal with truth or candor. Messengers often get killed. PC often rules the day.

PDF (56 pages): SSI Closing the Candor Chasm

PDF (4 Pages): Army Times – Can the Army Handle the Truth

Candor: Can the Army Handle the Truth?

By Rick Maze, Editor in Chief

A provocative paper recently published by the U.S. Army War College raises the question of whether the Army can handle the truth. Called “Closing the Candor Chasm: The Missing Element of Army Professionalism” and written by Col. Paul Paolozzi, the paper says speaking the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth is a way of building professional relationships and a stronger Army. Candor can be intimidating and unwanted in some circumstances, but it should be a key part of professional communication, Paolozzi says.

Paolozzi cites performance evaluations, training, education and counseling as areas in which complete honesty is missing. Candor, he says in the report, “is messy, hard, creates discomfort, and its presence is most often inversely proportional to rank and organizational size.”

Full Text of Army Times (main story and sidebars) below.

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2014/03/262014/03/26

Berto Jongman: Internet of Things “Scary as Hell”

IO Impotency

Cybersecurity Expert and CIO: Internet of Things is ‘Scary as Hell'

By Al Sacco

ComputerWorld, March 25, 2014

CIO – The terms “Internet of Things” (IoT) and “connected home” are two of the trendiest buzzwords in the technology world today. And while both clearly offer very real potential, they also introduce their own share of risk, particularly if they're not approached with caution, according to Jerry Irvine, an owner and CIO of IT outsourcing services firm, Prescient Solutions.

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Al Sacco: What exactly does the term “Internet of Things” mean to you?

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