Journal ISSN 1078-1935 – Page 3013 – Public Intelligence Blog

Medard Gabel, #2 to Buckminster Fuller in creating the analog World Game, is a founding member of the board of Earth Intelligence Network (EIN), a 501c3 Public Charity, and has devised the preliminary architecture and cost estimate for creating the EarthGame, which we trademarked in his name.

Click on the logo below to read his two-page estimate, subject to inflation adjustment, of what it would take to create an EarthGame with “true cost” information on all elements and universal participation by all humans. This is infinitely scalable.

EarthGame Pleliminary Plan

The complete concept, unrealized and lacking funding amidst the global financial meltdown, is centered on the creation of a World Brain in which the EarthGame is the primary public policy-budgteting dialog tool, and all individuals are able to use hand-hell cell phones to both access all information in all languages all the time; and to play themselves at all levels, local to global (panarchy is the opposite of anarchy).

Continue reading “About: EarthGame and World Brain”

2009/10/222009/10/22

Worth a Look: Dark Mission–The Secret History of NASA

Worth A Look

Recommended Review for a Re-Framing of NASA

This review is from the perspective of a former NASA Manned Spaceflight Controller, so it is more technical than expository. I first encountered Hoagland's claims through the NASA Technical Alert Briefing viewed by many controllers at the Johnson Space Center in 1989-90, found his claims creditable, and then discovered the briefing tape “disappeared” from the closed JSC Technical Library – from both the open card catalog and the closed shelf listing catalog. As a former university library page, I was shocked to find all references to the briefing tape we controllers viewed were gone two years later. When I began investigating the matter, I was told in no uncertain terms to cease any search for the missing library records.

2009/10/22

Journal: Wall Street’s Naked Swindle

03 Economy, Commerce, Commercial Intelligence, Ethics, Government, Reform

Full Story Online

A scheme to flood the market with counterfeit stocks helped kill Bear Stearns and Lehman Brothers — and the feds have yet to bust the culprits

MATT TAIBBIPosted Oct 14, 2009

What really happened to Bear and Lehman is that an economic drought temporarily left the hyenas without any more middle-class victims — and so they started eating each other, using the exact same schemes they had been using for years to fleece the rest of the country. And in the forensic footprint left by those kills, we can see for the first time exactly how the scam worked — and how completely even the government regulators who are supposed to protect us have given up trying to stop it.

This was a brokered bloodletting, one in which the power of the state was used to help effect a monstrous consolidation of financial and political power. Heading into 2008, there were five major investment banks in the United States: Bear, Lehman, Merrill Lynch, Morgan Stanley and Goldman Sachs. Today only Morgan Stanley and Goldman survive as independent firms, perched atop a restructured Wall Street hierarchy. And while the rest of the civilized world responded to last year's catastrophes with sweeping measures to rein in the corruption in their financial sectors, the United States invited the wolves into the government, with the popular new president, Barack Obama — elected amid promises to clean up the mess — filling his administration with Bear's and Lehman's conquerors, bestowing his papal blessing on a new era of robbery.

2009/10/222009/10/22

Journal: Marijuana Will Be Legalized

07 Health, Civil Society, Collective Intelligence, Ethics, Government, Law Enforcement

Prohibition Fighter

As a Harvard grad, former Princeton professor, and the son of a respected rabbi, Ethan Nadelmann might seem like an unlikely advocate for legalizing marijuana. But when you meet him, it all makes a lot of sense.

David Lyons, Newsweek, 15 October 2009

The idea is not that drugs are good but that prohibition is bad. Nadelmann argues that marijuana prohibition is as counterproductive as alcohol prohibition was in the 1920s, and that we'd all be better off if the government would just regulate and tax it. Ironically, this would give the government more control over the drug, not less.

Continue reading “Journal: Marijuana Will Be Legalized”

2009/10/222009/10/22

Journal: Demise of Obama in Afghanistan Part I

08 Wild Cards, 10 Security, Communities of Practice, Ethics, Peace Intelligence, Policy, Reform, Strategy

In my opinion, it is now almost certain that Afghanistan will wreck the presidency of Barack Obama. As I feared, Mr. Obama has allowed the US military and its allies in the Democratic wing and Republican wing of the national-security apparat (there is no real difference between these wings) to ensnare him in the wreckage left by the Clinton/Blair/Bush not-so-grand strategy of “indispensable” power: coercive diplomacy punctuated by endless “[no-so] precision” warfare. Supporting Sources for this Comment at end of posting.

Spinney Comments Continue After the Highlighted Article

Western export of the ballot box elixir is pure hubris

The absurd expectation heaped on Afghanistan's election is a fig leaf for leaders seduced by the allure of military power

Simon Jenkins Guardian 20 October 2009 21.30 BST

Continue reading “Journal: Demise of Obama in Afghanistan Part I”

2009/10/222009/10/22

Journal: Demise of Obama in Afghanistan Part II

08 Wild Cards, 10 Security, Communities of Practice, Ethics, Peace Intelligence, Policy, Reform, Strategy

Johann Hari: The three fallacies that have driven the war in Afghanistan

Case for escalating the war is based on premises that turn to dust on inspection

Johann Hari Independent Wednesday, 21 October 2009

Is Barack Obama about to drive his Presidency into a bloody ditch strewn with corpses? The President is expected any day now to announce his decision about the future of the war in Afghanistan. He knows US and British troops have now been stationed in the hell-mouth of Helmand longer than the First and Second World Wars combined – yet the mutterings from the marble halls of Washington DC suggest he may order a troop escalation.

Obama has to decide now whether to side with the American people and the Afghan people calling for a rapid reduction in US force, or with a small military clique demanding a ramping-up of the conflict. The populations of both countries are in close agreement. The latest Washington Post poll shows that 51 per cent of Americans say the war is “not worth fighting” and that ending the foreign occupation will “reduce terrorism”. Only 27 per cent disagree. At the other end of the gun-barrel, 77 per cent of Afghans in the latest BBC poll say the on-going US air strikes are “unacceptable”, and the US troops should only remain if they are going to provide reconstruction assistance rather than bombs.

Continue reading “Journal: Demise of Obama in Afghanistan Part II”

2009/10/212009/10/21

Event: 27-28 Oct 09 Denmark International Workshop on Counterterrorism and Open Source Intelligence

09 Terrorism, Communities of Practice, Ethics, Key Players, Peace Intelligence

The International Workshop on Counterterrorism and Open Source Intelligence is one of the most significant events in the field of counterterrorism and open source intelligence today.

The workshop is an opportunity for researchers, professionals, law enforcement officers, intelligence agencies, and industry decision makers to establish professional relationships and serves as a platform for the formation of international cooperation.

Continue reading “Event: 27-28 Oct 09 Denmark International Workshop on Counterterrorism and Open Source Intelligence”