Journal ISSN 1078-1935 – Page 2959 – Public Intelligence Blog

Ahmadinejad makes more sense on climate change than US leaders

Ahmadinejad: All countries should be able to use nuclear power

Iran's President Says Materialism, Capitalism Cause of Climate Change

Islamic Republic of Iran News Network Television (IRINN) as translated by Open Source Center (OSC)

Friday, December 18, 2009

(Ahmadinezhad in progress) … … Every year millions of people lose their lives as a result of pollution, and skin and respiratory illnesses are on the increase. If greenhouse-gases continue to increase at the present speed, they will reach twice the level of gases before industrialization. In other words, instead of a reduction of 50 per cent, they will increase by 50 per cent and will pose a real challenge to the natural environment.

Gentleman, you may associate these remarks with various similar and related issues in your minds. However, the question is this: What is the cause? The first answer is the increase in the consumption of fossil fuels and widespread and destructive meddling with nature. But the main and more serious question is: What is the factor responsible for the increase in the use of fossil fuel and meddling with nature? I would like to present the answer to this question in two levels.

The first level takes a fundamental and macro view of the problem. Is the climate change phenomenon merely an ecological problem or is it first and foremost a cultural, behavioral and economical issue?

Dear colleagues, a glance at the changes in social circumstances and thought processes in the, at least, past two decades will reveal the dominance of materialism over thought, behavior and ties in vast parts of the world. The survival of capitalism depends on the rigorous spread of consumerism and widespread meddling in nature.

Continue reading “Journal: Iranians Making Sense on Climate Matters?”

2009/12/192009/12/19

Journal: Jewish Bible versus Palestinian Land Records

Peace Intelligence

Palestinian village caught amid Israel settlements

By BEN HUBBARD, Associated Press Writer Thu Dec 17, 5:29 pm ET

QARIOUT, West Bank – In this West Bank village surrounded by Israeli settlements, a Palestinian farmer says he has documents proving he owns his land. On a nearby hill, Jewish settler Batya Medad says she too has proof of ownership — the Old Testament.

This quarrel over the land Palestinians claim for their future state is the chief roadblock in Middle East peace efforts.

Mohammed Muqbil was born in this West Bank village in 1939; Medad has lived in neighboring Shiloh since its creation four decades later. They speak different languages and have never met, though their homes lie less than a mile apart.

And between them lies the harsh conflict over Israel's West Bank settlements.

The Palestinians have refused to resume negotiations until all settlement building stops. Last month, Israel's government announced a 10-month halt to new construction in hopes of bringing the Palestinians to the table. But east Jerusalem and some 3,000 homes already under construction were exempt and the Palestinians rejected it.

Qariout, a rocky village of 2,600 people about 20 miles north of Jerusalem, illustrates why Palestinians are desperate to halt the spread of Jewish settlements.

Beyond the political issue of their effect on borders for any future Palestinian state, settlements restrict daily life in hundreds of West Bank villages and gobble up farmland — Qariout has lost two-thirds of its land since 1979.

Read entire article.

2009/12/192009/12/19

Journal: Integrity (Truth) Coming to the Top on Banking

03 Economy, Commerce, Commercial Intelligence, Government, Law Enforcement

I doubt it, but hope springs eternal could this be a significant development? To date, Simon Johnson has been a very astute observer of the financial meltdown and has been crusading for breaking up the mega banks …

Paul Volcker Picks Up A Bat

Simon Johnson

Baseline Scenario

Dec 17, 2009

For most the past 12 months, Paul Volcker was sitting on the policy sidelines. He had impressive sounding job titles – member of President Obama’s Transition Economic Advisory Board immediately after last November’s election, and quickly named to head the new Economic Recovery Board.

But the Recovery Board, and Volcker himself, have seldom met with the President. Economic and financial sector policy, by all accounts, has been made largely by Tim Geithner at Treasury and Larry Summers at the White House, with help from Peter Orszag at the Office of Management and Budget, and Christina Romer at the Council of Economic Advisers.

With characteristic wry humor, Volcker denied in late October that he had lost clout within the administration: “I did not have influence to start with.”

But that same front page interview in the New York Times [10/21/09] contained a well placed shock to then prevailing policy consensus.

Volcker, legendary former chairman of the Federal Reserve Board with much more experience of Wall Street than any current policymaker, was blunt: We need to break up our biggest banks and return to the basic split of activities that existed under the Glass-Steagall Act of 1933 – a highly regulated (and somewhat boring) set of banks to run the payments system, and a completely separate set of financial entities to help firms raise capital (and to trade securities).

Continue reading “Journal: Integrity (Truth) Coming to the Top on Banking”

2009/12/182010/09/02

Reference: Countries at the Crossroads

Geospatial, United Nations & NGOs

Countries at the Crossroads is an annual survey of government performance in 70 strategically important countries worldwide that are at a critical crossroads in determining their political future. The in-depth comparative analyses and quantitative ratings – examining government accountability, civil liberties, rule of law, anticorruption efforts and transparency – are intended to help international policymakers identify areas of progress, as well as to highlight areas of concern that could be addressed in diplomatic efforts and reform assistance.

A new edition of Crossroads is published each year, with one set of 35 countries analyzed in odd years and the other 35 in even years. Crossroads reports are written and evaluated by some of the most prominent independent experts available for each country.

Lists by Region

The Interactive map color-codes all Crossroads countries based on their government performance, and provides policy recommendations and each country's status in the Millennium Challenge Account process. By clicking on the hyperlink within the pop-up boxes, users can access the most recent country reports.

2006/2007 Interactive Map

Countries at the Crossroads Blog

Phi Beta Iota: As recommended by Berto Jongman. These countries are precisely what General Al Gray, then Commandant of the Marine Corps, was thinking about when he advocated, in 1989, that we get serious about “peaceful preventive measures.”

2009/12/182009/12/18

Reference: Map of Multilateral Peace Operation Deployments

Geospatial, United Nations & NGOs

SIPRI Map of Multilateral Peace Operation Deployments

Click to enlarge

This SIPRI map presents a snapshot of multilateral peace operation deployments worldwide in September 2009. Using data drawn from the SIPRI Multilateral Peace Operations Database, it shows where missions are taking place, how large they are and which organizations and coalitions are conducting them.
Download this SIPRI Map.

Publisher: SIPRI
1 page (A3)
November 2009

Phi Beta Iota: Berto Jongman recommends this. All of these operations are what we envisioned being supported with M4IS2 out of the embedded Multinational Decision Support Center within the Defense Open Source Center as described in 2009 DoD OSINT Leadership and Staff Briefings.

2009/12/182009/12/18

Journal: ClimateGate 18 December 2009 Evening

Earth Intelligence

The Real Melt-Down in Copenhagen

If the United Nations cannot run a conference in Copenhagen without riots in the streets, why would anyone want to turn over the governance of the world to these people?

For old “skeptics” like myself, watching the chaos in Copenhagen was sheer joy. It’s always a mistake for liars to gather in one place to trumpet their lies because it always attracts people who believe that the truth is the best antidote.

Low targets, goals dropped: Copenhagen ends in failure

The UN climate summit reached a weak outline of a global agreement last night in Copenhagen, falling far short of what Britain and many poor countries were seeking and leaving months of tough negotiations to come.

Scientists Attach Hope to Wrong Rising Star – Blow Credibility & Get Gored

As polls show credibility for scientists falling off the same cliff as Obama, Wall Street, politicians and the media, perhaps there is a reason. Perhaps there is a link between them.

To Denmark, From Russia, With Lies

As Ronald Reagan used to say, facts are stubborn things. The fact is that imminent man-made climate disaster has been shown to be a massive fraud driven by manipulated data and deliberate suppression of facts to the contrary.

The latest Climate-gate shoe to drop is the Moscow-based Institute of Economic Analysis (IEA) accusation that the Hadley Center of Britain's Meteorological Office deliberately relied on a carefully selected 25% of Russia's weather stations that fit its theory of global warming.

At Copenhagen, Chávez Suggests Obama is the Devil

Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez spoke at the United Nations Climate Change Conference today in Copenhagen, and suggested that President Obama is the devil.

Chávez said that “the Kyoto Protocol cannot be declared dead or extinguished, which is what the US pretends to do. Which is why (President) Evo (Morales of Bolivia) tells a great truth: If Obama, Nobel War Prize, said here, by the way, it smells of sulfur here. It smells of sulfur. It keeps smelling of sulfur in this world.

Global Warming Science? Nope, Global Warming Scam

Trick No. 1: You Destroy Conflicting Data:
Trick No. 2: You Cherry Pick Your Data to Show a Recent Rise in Temperatures
Trick No. 3: You “Adjust” Away Inconvenient Trends That Threaten to Derail Your Hypothesis:
Trick No. 4: You Cherry Pick the Model to “Prove” Global Warming is Real
Trick No. 5: You Spend a Lot of time Promoting Your Views with the Media–and Publicly Attacking Your Skeptics.
Trick No. 6: “The Science is Settled. The Science is Settled.”

The Climategate code

In addition to the more than 1,000 emails and assorted documents that were leaked to the public a month ago, there were several files containing software code, seemingly source code for the calculations the Climate Research Unit of East Anglia used for processing and adjusting temperatures for their calculations of global warming.

Immediately after the leak, attention was drawn to comments in the code's documentation that seemed to indicate that the programmers had difficulty understanding what had been done previously, did not feel capable of righting the programming wrongs, and on occasion invented weather stations to park data or even invented data.

Now, as computer scientists and programmers have had more time to analyse the code as well as the comments, programming errors that would change calculations or even cause the program to skip data are coming to light.

2009/12/182009/12/18

Journal: Contractors Out of Control, Money Wasted

04 Inter-State Conflict, 05 Civil War, 08 Wild Cards, 10 Security, 11 Society, Commerce, Commercial Intelligence, Ethics, Government, Military, Peace Intelligence

Published on Friday, December 18, 2009 by Rebel Reports

Stunning Statistics About the War Every American Should Know

Contrary to popular belief, the US actually has 189,000 personnel on the ground in Afghanistan right now—and that number is quickly rising.

by Jeremy Scahill

A hearing in Sen. Claire McCaskill's Contract Oversight subcommittee on contracting in Afghanistan has highlighted some important statistics that provide a window into the extent to which the Obama administration has picked up the Bush-era war privatization baton and sprinted with it. Overall, contractors now comprise a whopping 69% of the Department of Defense's total workforce, “the highest ratio of contractors to military personnel in US history.” That's not in one war zone-that's the Pentagon in its entirety.

In Afghanistan, the Obama administration blows the Bush administration out of the privatized water. According to a memo [PDF] released by McCaskill's staff, “From June 2009 to September 2009, there was a 40% increase in Defense Department contractors in Afghanistan. During the same period, the number of armed private security contractors working for the Defense Department in Afghanistan doubled, increasing from approximately 5,000 to more than 10,000.”

At present, there are 104,000 Department of Defense contractors in Afghanistan. According to a report this week from the Congressional Research Service, as a result of the coming surge of 30,000 troops in Afghanistan, there may be up to 56,000 additional contractors deployed. But here is another group of contractors that often goes unmentioned: 3,600 State Department contractors and 14,000 USAID contractors. That means that the current total US force in Afghanistan is approximately 189,000 personnel (68,000 US troops and 121,000 contractors). And remember, that's right now. And that, according to McCaskill, is a conservative estimate. A year from now, we will likely see more than 220,000 US-funded personnel on the ground in Afghanistan.

Continue reading “Journal: Contractors Out of Control, Money Wasted”