The truth at any cost lowers all other costs — curated by former US spy Robert David Steele.
Hillary Clinton Room, Women's National Democratic Club
Online Biography & Linked Publications
Sense of Humor Below the Line
Continue reading “Photographs: Robert David STEELE Vivas at 60”
Global Shadow Banking Monitoring Report 2012
45 pages, PDF
The “shadow banking system” can broadly be described as “credit intermediation involving entities and activities outside the regular banking system”. Although intermediating credit through non-bank channels can have advantages, such channels can also become a source of systemic risk, especially when they are structured to perform bank-like functions (e.g. maturity transformation and leverage) and when their interconnectedness with the regular banking system is strong. Therefore, appropriate monitoring and regulatory frameworks for the shadow banking system needs to be in place to mitigate the build-up of risks.
The Real Lesson of the Petraeus Scandal
We delude ourselves about the way we use technology.
Slate, Monday, Nov. 19, 2012
EXTRACT:
Were any of our email accounts subject to scrutiny by the FBI, we might not be revealed as cheating cads, but most of us would, in ways large and small, be exposed as frequent and shameless purveyors of idle gossip, unnecessary fibs, outrageous flattery, pathetic excuses, and bandwidth-hogging cat videos. It’s all there in the emails and text messages that map the quotidian details of our lives. If, as Marshall McLuhan taught us, technologies are “extensions of man,” then the Petraeus story serves as a useful reminder of how our technologies (incredible as they are) nevertheless can encourage the extension of man’s less noble traits. History might end up judging Petraeus a meritocratic and military success but a moral manqué. As for the rest of us, let him without a sinful email sent (or drafts) folder cast the first stone.
Tip of the Hat to Farhad Abdolian and Mark Thompson at Google+.
Huh?
US, France assemble coalition to confront Islamists in Mali
By CJ Radin
The Long War Journal, November 18, 2012
The Islamist takeover of two-thirds of Mali this year has spurred the West as well as concerned neighboring countries in Africa to find a way to restore Mali to its democratic path and drive out jihadist elements. Islamist groups in Mali currently include Ansar Dine, the Movement for Oneness and Jihad in West Africa (MUJAO), and al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM), which is considered one of the most dangerous of al Qaeda's affiliated groups.
Continue reading “Mini-Me: Why Are US and France Invading Mali?”
In 2012, the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) approached the National Research Council's TIGER standing committee and asked it to develop a list of workshop topics to explore the impact of emerging science and technology. From the list of topics given to DIA, three were chosen to be developed by the Committee for Science and Technology Challenges to U.S. National Security Interests. The first in a series of three workshops was held on April 23-24, 2012. This report summarizes that first workshop which explored the phenomenon known as big data.
The objective for the first workshop is given in the statement of task, which explains that that workshop will review emerging capabilities in large computational data to include speed, data fusion, use, and commodification of data used in decision making. The workshop will also review the subsequent increase in vulnerabilities over the capabilities gained and the significance to national security. The committee devised an agenda that helped the committee, sponsors, and workshop attendees probe issues of national security related to so-called big data, as well as gain understanding of potential related vulnerabilities. The workshop was used to gather data that is described in this report, which presents views expressed by individual workshop participants.
Big Data: A Workshop Report is the first in a series of three workshops, held in early 2012 to further the ongoing engagement among the National Research Council's (NRC's) Technology Insight-Gauge, Evaluate, and Review (TIGER) Standing Committee, the scientific and technical intelligence (S&TI) community, and the consumers of S&TI products.
Evolution's Purpose: A Creation Story for Our Time
August 31st, 2012
Steve McIntosh and Jeff Salzman discuss Steve's new book, Evolution’s Purpose: An Integral Interpretation of the Scientific Story of Our Origins—a powerful and exciting argument for the progressive nature of evolution in matter, life, culture and personal development. He demonstrates how these fundamental dimensions of life are called forward into more complex and intelligent forms by the gravitational pull of Goodness, Truth and Beauty. Ultimately Evolution’s Purpose reveals a radical spiritual teaching, and it succeeds not by relying on established religious lineages but by pointing out the profound creative forces that are demonstrably at work in our world and in our lives.
