Journal ISSN 1078-1935 – Page 2855 – Public Intelligence Blog

Koreas Comment:

The White House statement presented the exercises in the context of routine behavior among Allies, timid and defensive. The Defense Department and UN Command statements indicated the exercises are pointed, aggressive and intended to be intimidating. The two statements neutralize each other because reassurance always trumps vigilance.

Undermining both statements is the fact that the US did not respond in a timely fashion to the defense of South Korea, which was attacked on 26 March. The response lag time erodes the cogency of all the lofty American words. The bottom line is that South Korea was attacked, but the US response took four months. That is not “strategic reassurance.”

As noted yesterday, in four months, a healthy North Korean army could overrun the Peninsula. Fortunately, it is not all that healthy. Somewhere in Washington the strategic thinking is muddled, timid and misguided in dealing with the Far East.

The Korean peninsula has now become an acute hotspot where an accidental clash can escalate into a full-scale war.

Continue reading “NIGHTWATCH Extracts: US Foreign Policy Confused”

2010/07/22

Journal: NATO Deaf to Bad News, Afghanistan Diving

08 Wild Cards

editor spinney time — Chuck Spinney Recommends

Georges Clemencueau, premier of France 1917-20, said war (WWI) is too serious a matter to be left to the generals. Matthias Gebauer explains below why the recent Nato conference of ministers in Kabul proves that the Afghan war is too serious a matter to be left to the politicians.

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The Conference that Wasn't

NATO Diplomats Tune Out the Bad News in Afghanistan

A Commentary by Matthias Gebauer, der Spiegel, 21 July 2010

http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/0,1518,707689,00.html

NATO foreign ministers heard only what they wanted to hear on Tuesday in Kabul as they sought to reassure the world that withdrawal can take place in 2014. The reality, however, is quite different. And in the end, Hamid Karzai, who is already looking for ways to cement his post-NATO power, will be the beneficiary.

2010/07/212010/12/19

Worth a Look: Book Review Lists (Positive)

00 Remixed Review Lists, Worth A Look

00 Remixed Review Lists is the persistent URL for all of them as they are updated. This was done in preparation for the final part of INTELLIGENCE FOR EARTH: Clarity, Diversity, Integrity, & Sustainability. In contrast to the 98 Review categories where books are cross-listed and appear in multiple categories, in this set of “good news” reviews, each book appears only once.

Worth a Look: Book Reviews on Africa

Worth a Look: Book Reviews on Analysis

Worth a Look: Book Reviews on Atlases

Worth a Look: Book Reviews on Bio-Economics

Worth a Look: Book Reviews of Capitalism Reincarnated

Continue reading “Worth a Look: Book Review Lists (Positive)”

2010/07/212013/03/03

Worth a Look: Book Review Lists (Negative)

00 Remixed Review Lists, Worth A Look

The long list below is organized along the lines of the Revolutionary Prediction Matrix discussed in a short Marine Corps University paper and a longer graduate thesis, to wit: Political-Legal; Socio-Economic; Ideo-Cultural; Techno-Demographic; and Natural-Geographic. It is also available online as Chapter 20: “21st Century Counterintelligence: Evaluating the Health of the Nation” in the new book INTELLIGENCE for EARTH: Clarity, Diversity, Integrity, & Sustainability (Earth Intelligence Network, 2010).

Political-Legal

Worth a Look: Book Reviews on Government Corruption

Continue reading “Worth a Look: Book Review Lists (Negative)”

2010/07/212010/07/21

U.S. Geological Survey: Twitter Earthquake Detector (TED)

03 Environmental Degradation, 10 Security, Citizen-Centered, Civil Society, Collective Intelligence, Earth Intelligence, Geospatial, Geospatial, Government, Graphics, Media

People can receive earthquake data from the @USGSTED Twitter account. The site sends maps of earthquake zones to account holders.

U.S. Geological Survey: Twitter Earthquake Detector (TED)

Sample map output from the Twitter Earthquake Detector prototype project.

The U.S. Geological Survey is using funds from the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act to support a student who’s investigating social Internet technologies as a way to quickly gather information about recent earthquakes.

In this exploratory effort, the USGS is developing a system that gathers real-time, earthquake-related messages from the social networking site Twitter and applies place, time, and key word filtering to gather geo-located accounts of shaking. This approach provides rapid first-impression narratives and, potentially, photos from people at the hazard’s location. The potential for earthquake detection in populated but sparsely seismicly-instrumented regions is also being investigated.

Social Internet technologies are providing the general public with anecdotal earthquake hazard information before scientific information has been published from authoritative sources. People local to an event are able to publish information via these technologies within seconds of their occurrence. In contrast, depending on the location of the earthquake, scientific alerts can take between 2 to 20 minutes. By adopting and embracing these new technologies, the USGS potentially can augment its earthquake response products and the delivery of hazard information.

2010/07/212010/07/21

Journal: Israel, Left to Right, One-State Reprise

08 Wild Cards

Another fascinating report by Jonathan Cook, a freelance reporter based in Nazareth on the West Bank, and one of the best reporters covering the Middle East

One-State Debate Explodes Myth About Zionist Left

by Jonathan Cook, Antiwar.com, July 21, 2010

http://original.antiwar.com/cook/2010/07/20/one-state-debate-explodes-myth/

A version of this article originally appeared in The National, published in Abu Dhabi.

A fascinating debate is entering Israel’s political mainstream on a once-taboo subject: the establishment of a single state as a resolution of the conflict, one in which Jews and Palestinians might potentially live as equal citizens. Surprisingly, those advocating such a solution are to be found chiefly on Israel’s political Right.

The debate, which challenges the current orthodoxy of a two-state future, is rapidly exploding traditional conceptions about the Zionist Right and Left.

FULL STORY ONLINE

Phi Beta Iota: The continued atrocities against the Palestinians disqualify any Israeli government from being considered morally, intellectually, or practically capable of a one-state solution. The Arab states are equally corrupt on all fronts. The Middle East needs a mix of tribal boundary restorations, Jerusalem as an international city, a regional water authority, and a fifty-year international protectorate that can raise two generations to live in peace.

2010/07/212010/07/21

Journal: Division with US Army over Muslim Dissidents–LtGen Jerry Boykin, USA (Ret) Sounds Off

04 Education, 08 Immigration, 10 Security, 11 Society, Corruption, Military

Marcus-Aurelius-150x150 — Marcus Aurelius Recommends

COMMENTS:

1. Before anybody asks — yes, I know from which network the video clip apparently originated and yes, I am well aware of LTG Boykin's views (or biases, depending on your perspective).

2. “I have absolutely no basis to dispute LTG Boykin's assertions.” OTOH, I know two separate people involved in studying the Hassan case, one Army and one Marine Corps and have heard absolutely zero about the case from either. Further, if you recall the coverage in the immediate aftermath of the event, people were turning cheetah flips to avoid the kind of candor LTG Boykin displays.

boykin CBN — LtGen Jerry Boykin, USA (Ret) Sounds Off

Phi Beta Iota: We are among those that admire LtGen Boykin for his directness. His book Never Surrender remains a favorite, along with the Leadership Lessons of Jesus that was offered for sale in the US Special Operations bookstore. The US Army is making the same mistake the FBI made when it refused to act on the PBS exposure by Steve Emerson, author of American Jihad–The Terrorists Living Among Us, because they confused “political correctness” with intelligence, and their leaders have no integrity (a problem common across the flag and senior executive ranks in every corner of the US Government). We would augment LtGen Boykin's observation with our own on Cognitive Dissonance.