Category: Journal ISSN 1078-1935

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Journal: US Intelligence versus WikiLeaks

Civil Society, Government

U.S. Intelligence planned to destroy WikiLeaks

WikiLeaks release: March 15, 2010

Phi Beta Iota: Click on the title to read their description of the SECRET/NOFORN document entitled Wikileaks.org – An Online Reference to Foreign Intelligence Services, Insurgents, Or Terrorist Groups? dated 18 March 2008, evidently out of the U.S. Army.   The document is no longer available at the stated link.  Our esteemed colleague Steven Aftergood of the Federation of American Scientists (FAS) has been down on WikiLeaks for its irresponsibility, as found in this posting at Secrecy News,  Wikileaks: Giving Leaks a Bad Name.  What is clear from the description is that these folks have no clue how the US Intelligence Community actually works (or not).  They seriously exaggerate and even misrepresent the document's thrust, and draw strategic action conclusions about “planned” action from minor-league tactical-technical level “exploratory” analysis.  We continue to believe that whistle-blowing is good for society, but we also meet FAS half-way in observing that WikiLeaks is half-baked.  Public intelligence in the public interest is NOT about violating secrecy oaths, exposing secrets, or in any way breaking the law–instead, public intelligence is about driving holistic analytics using open sources and methods so as to produce decision-support that can be shared, and in being shared, can help harmonize spending and behavior by multiple multinational stake-holders.  WikiLeaks is the opposite of Phi Beta Iota.

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Bottom-Up Energy: Wait Not/Rely Not on Government & Industry

01 Poverty, 05 Energy, International Aid, Technologies
(energy from rice husks) See source article

Energy in the developing world

Power to the people

Technology and development: A growing number of initiatives are promoting bottom-up ways to deliver energy to the world’s poor  (Sep 2nd 2010)

AROUND 1.5 billion people, or more than a fifth of the world’s population, have no access to electricity, and a billion more have only an unreliable and intermittent supply. Of the people without electricity, 85% live in rural areas or on the fringes of cities. Extending energy grids into these areas is expensive: the United Nations estimates that an average of $35 billion-40 billion a year needs to be invested until 2030 so everyone on the planet can cook, heat and light their premises, and have energy for productive uses such as schooling. On current trends, however, the number of “energy poor” people will barely budge, and 16% of the world’s population will still have no electricity by 2030, according to the International Energy Agency.

But why wait for top-down solutions? Providing energy in a bottom-up way instead has a lot to recommend it. There is no need to wait for politicians or utilities to act. The technology in question, from solar panels to low-energy light-emitting diodes (LEDs), is rapidly falling in price. Local, bottom-up systems may be more sustainable and produce fewer carbon emissions than centralised schemes. In the rich world, in fact, the trend is towards a more flexible system of distributed, sustainable power sources. The developing world has an opportunity to leapfrog the centralised model, just as it leapfrogged fixed-line telecoms and went straight to mobile phones.

Continue reading “Bottom-Up Energy: Wait Not/Rely Not on Government & Industry”

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Journal: CIA Out, JSOC In for Covert Operations–Meanwhile, CIA PAO Touts CIA as a 9-to-5 Job

07 Other Atrocities, 09 Justice, 10 Security, Government, Military

Marcus Aurelius Recommends

Shhhhhh! JSOC is Hiring Interrogators and Covert Operatives for ‘Special Access Programs'

Jeremy Scahill | August 25, 2010

What has become abundantly clear is that the Obama administration has taken the Bush-era doctrine of the world as a battlefield and run with it. US special forces are now operating in seventy-five countries across the globe—up from sixty under Bush—and special operations sources say Obama is a major fan of the work of JSOC and other special operations forces.

Full Story Online at The Nation

Working at the CIA: Fact or Fiction

Despite its portrayal in the movies, working at the Central Intelligence Agency isn’t glamour and danger all the time. In fact, for most officers, it’s more like a normal 9-to-5 job. This story is the first in a series that will debunk certain myths and misperceptions about working at the CIA.

Meet Brad, Chris, Larry, and Eleanor — all experienced CIA officers with time spent overseas. In this article, they’ll share their insights and do their best to debunk myths about being an Agency employee.

FULL STORY at CIA Web Site

Phi Beta Iota: Just shaking our head.  CIA, 9 to 5.  The other observation is that unilateral anything is bad, bad, bad.  We should be creating multinational regional stations and using host country case officers on the street, not muscle-bound guys whose idea of cover clothing is shorts and corafam shoes.

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Seed Money for Ideas Addressing Global Health Challenges–and the Fly in the Milk Bowl

01 Poverty, 02 Infectious Disease, 07 Health, 12 Water, Gift Intelligence, Peace Intelligence, Technologies

Unorthodox thinking is essential to overcoming the most persistent challenges in global health. Vaccines were first developed over 200 years ago because revolutionary thinkers took an entirely new approach to preventing disease. Grand Challenges Explorations fosters innovation in global health research.

The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation has committed $100 million to encourage scientists worldwide to expand the pipeline of ideas to fight our greatest health challenges.Launched in 2008, Grand Challenge Explorations grants have already been awarded to 340 researchers from 34 countries.

Open to All Disciplines: Anyone Can Apply
The grant program is open to anyone from any discipline, from student to tenured professor, and from any organization – colleges and universities, government laboratories, research institutions, non-profit organizations and for-profit companies.

Agile, Accelerated Grant-Making
The initiative uses an agile, accelerated grant-making process with short two-page applications and no preliminary data required.

Applications are submitted online, and winning grants are chosen approximately 4 months from the submission deadline.Initial grants of $100,000 are awarded two times a year. Successful projects have the opportunity to receive a follow-on grant of up to $1 million.

Example: Water Sanitation Challenge that earns $100,000

De-compartmentalizing science through Grandchallenges.org

Phi Beta Iota: The problem with this well-intentioned initiative is that it throws money as items in isolation.  All well and good.  It would be much more impressive if it had a strategic analytic model that emphasized healthy lifestyle, healthy environment, and natural/alternative cures; and if it demanded some form of intelligence coordination in relation to all the other policies that impact on health far more negatively that we can solve–the bottom line is that we are killing our species faster than any amount of innovation can help it survive.  In our humble opinion.

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Journal: Twitter Breaks the News

09 Justice, 10 Security, Civil Society, Law Enforcement, Media, Methods & Process, Tools

Full Story Online

Twitter breaks story on Discovery Channel gunman James Lee

Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, September 2, 2010

The news broke around 1 p.m. with a few sketchy details. Gunman. Shots. Hostages. Discovery building.

Within minutes, there were photos, including an astonishing one of a man clad in shorts, carrying a rifle and stalking through what looked like an office courtyard.

The news of a gunman at the Discovery Channel's headquarters in Silver Spring indeed traveled fast on Wednesday, but none of it came through radio, TV or newspaper Web sites, at least not at first. As it has with other breaking news events — the landing of a jet on the Hudson River in 2009, the 2008 massacre in Mumbai — the story unfolded first in hiccupping fits and starts on Twitter, the much-hyped micro-blogging service that has turned millions of people into worldwide gossips, opinion-mongers and amateur news reporters.

See Also:
Event Report CORRECTED LINKS: Responding to Real Time Information, Open Systems and the Obama IT Vision [Google-Microsoft Meld]
Graphics: Twitter as an Intelligence Tool
ICT4Peace Kyrgyzstan Crisis Wiki
Journal: DARPA & MIT Discover “Share the Wealth”
Journal: DARPA Tests Twitter
Journal: Free Twitter Rocks, People Rule in Haiti
Journal: Haiti–Twitter Rocks
Journal: IC on Twitter, Still Not Making Sense
Journal: PA & NYPD Criminalize Twitter
Journal: Taming Twitter–Emergence of Baby World Brain?
Journal: Tech ‘has changed foreign policy’
Journal: The Twitter Train Has Left the Station
Journal: Twitter Aggregation Way Cool
Journal: Whither Twitter?
Peace-Building Thru Spotlights on Local Insights
Reference: How to Use Twitter to Build Intelligence
Review: SMS Uprising: Mobile Activism in Africa
Review: The World Is Open–How Web Technology Is Revolutionizing Education
Twitter & SMS Used to Help Election in Kenya
U.S. Geological Survey: Twitter Earthquake Detector (TED)
Worth a Look: CrowdMap (Beta)
Worth a Look: MicroPlace Giving to the Poor
Worth a Look: Talking Plants–Sensor to Shooter

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Journal: German Military on Peak Oil

05 Energy, Collaboration Zones, Communities of Practice, Key Players
Full Story Online
Full Story Online

09/01/2010

‘Peak Oil' and the German Government

Military Study Warns of a Potentially Drastic Oil Crisis

By Stefan Schultz

The relationship with Russia, in particular, is of fundamental importance for German access to oil and gas, the study says.   …  Peak oil would also have profound consequences for Berlin's posture toward the Middle East, according to the study.

Oil will determine power:
Increasing importance of oil exporters:
Politics in place of the market:
Market failures:
Relapse into planned economy:
Global chain reaction:
Crisis of political legitimacy:

The study appears to be deep and honest.  What does surprise us, however, are three things:

1.  Der Spiegel does not make reference to all of the same studies done in the 1970's that were ignored by policymakers and politicians.

2.  Der Spiegel and the study appear to confuse existing governments with legitimacy, rather than honest effective governance with legitimacy.  If there is a revolution in any of these countries, it will be to throw the corrupt rascals out and re-set democracy.  Revolutions are NOT expected in the Nordic countries or BENELUX.

3.  No one seems to understand that the time has come for a global Manhattan Project to simultaneously address the ten high level threats to humanity by harmonizing spending and policies by all players across the twelve core policies and in consonance with a futures council led by the future powers: Brazil, China, India, Indonesia, Iran, Russia, and Venezuela as well as Wild Cards such as Malaysia and Turkey.

See Also:

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Google, MSoft, IBM, HP, Oracle, Intel (chips), National Security and Perceived Internet Threats

04 Education, 04 Inter-State Conflict, 10 Security, Commerce, Computer/online security, Cyberscams, malware, spam, Government, Military, Misinformation & Propaganda, Secrecy & Politics of Secrecy, Technologies
  • U.S. Strategy: Control The World By Controlling The Internet
    A Chinese Perspective, by Chen Baoguo, August 24, 2010
    In May 2009, Microsoft announced on its website that they would turn off the Windows Live Messenger service for Cuba, Syria, Iran, Sudan and North Korea, in accordance with US legislation. In January 2010, Google, the company which owns the largest Internet information resources, declared that in order to establish a more open Internet environment, they had to abandon the Chinese market.What is even more worrying is that Senator Joseph Lieberman, chairman of US Homeland Security Committee, recently presented to the US Senate a bill titled “Protecting Cyberspace as a National Asset. “To control the world by controlling the Internet has been a dominant strategy of the US.From the network infrastructure protection of the Clinton era to the network anti-terrorism of the Bush era and to the “network deterrence” of the Obama era, the national information security strategy of the US has evolved from a preventative strategy to a preemptive one.Meanwhile, the methodology has moved from trying to control Internet hardware to control of Internet content.

  • Video: “The cyber-threat has been grossly exaggerated” debate between Marc Rotenberg & Bruce Schneier VERSUS Mike McConnell & Jonathan Zittrain

  • China Cyber-army Talk Pulled from Black Hat
    By: Brian Prince 2010-07-15
    A presentation on Chinese state-sponsored hacking has been pulled from the Black Hat security conference due to pressure from the Taiwanese government. The talk, titled “The Chinese Cyber Army: An Archaeological Study from 2001 to 2010,” was to be held by Wayne Huang, CTO of Web application security firm Armorize Technologies.
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