Journal ISSN 1078-1935 – Page 3031 – Public Intelligence Blog

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The U.S. trains forces in Afghanistan that then go to work for the Taliban

Ann Jones

Key Points:

1. Washington and U.S. military out of touch with ground truth and historical-cultural reality in Afghanistan.

2. We are training individuals in US techniques who desert and join the Taliban–we are literally training the Taliban to beat us.

3. Many individuals are re-enrolling under multiple names in order to get the training and the good food, while many others take the training and the food and never come back after their first period of leave (vacation after training).

4. Pashtuns are not joining police and so the Americans are sending non-Pashtuns back into Pashtun territory to act as police–this is so stupid as to be insanely criminal and irresponsible.

Phi Beta Iota: This article was linked to in an earlier post on connecting the dots, but it reads better in Salon and we recommend a careful review–this is journalism at its very best, informing the public about FACTS that the Administration desires to ignore.

2009/09/24

Journal: The Smart List: 12 Shocking Ideas That Could Change the World

Collaboration Zones, Communities of Practice, Policies

WIRED MAGAZINE: 17.10

Warning: The ideas expressed here may be dangerous. .

The 12 Ideas with Links to Each Sub-Story and Comment

We found four of the ideas to be truly radical.

5. Cut Off Aid to Africa

6. Empty the Prisons

7. Save the Slums

8. Forget Medical Privacy

The rest, including 12, Overhaul the Pentagon, are smoke and mirrors in the absence of a total make-over of the relationship among citizens, information, and how money is allocated in society.

2009/09/242011/04/17

Graphic: Twitter as an Intelligence Tool

Advanced Cyber/IO, Citizen-Centered

Both of these graphics were created for the eight-minute presentation on Real-Time Intelligence that can be viewed by clicking on either graphic (as always, words in Notes).

Twitter is, like most intelligence environments, a very large garbage pit with some potential.

The NYPD now does monitor Twitter and cross-walks anomalous events against Twitter plotted on Trends.

Twitter can also be used to reach a specific individual at a specific time and place, or to harness the dispersed population to observe and report specific conditions or tangible things.

2009/09/242009/09/24

Journal: Barack Obama, College Administrator

Communities of Practice, Ethics, Policies, Reform, Threats

CBS replaying National Review Online

Journal: The Afghanistan Impasse–Chuck Spinney Highlights NYT Review of Books

04 Inter-State Conflict, 10 Security, Military

The Afghanistan Impasse

By Ahmed Rashid New York Review of Books

Volume 56, Number 15 · October 8, 2009

To Live or to Perish Forever: Two Tumultuous Years in Pakistan by Nicholas Schmidle Henry Holt, 254 pp., $25.00

Seeds of Terror: How Heroin Is Bankrolling the Taliban and al Qaeda by Gretchen Peters Thomas Dunne/St. Martin's, 300 pp., $25.95

Follow the Frog to the full article with Chuck Spinney's highlights, nine pages in an easily downloaded document.

Highlights as we read them:

1) Massiviely fraudulent election in Afghanistan;

2) Military situation going from bad to worse for US and the (virtually non-existent) Afghan Army and Police;

3) Pakistan keeping 80% of its troops on the border with India;

4) Pakistan refusing to rein in its one really disciplined jihadist group that keeps attacking India (Mumbia plus).

2009/09/23

Journal: Real-time Web keeps social networkers connected

Real Time

With this post we begin a new sub-set under Journal, for Real-Time and Near-Real-Time material. The other similar sub-set is focused on True Cost.

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Now, established companies and start-ups are scrambling to develop real-time Web applications for gaming, intuitive online searches, location services and customer support. The market potential is huge, tech analysts and others say.

Everything from cellphones to common digital cameras is “being turned into eyes and ears for applications,” says Tim O'Reilly, the founder of O'Reilly Media who is credited with inventing the term Web 2.0. “Data is being collected, presented and acted upon in real time. It's all about immediacy and instantaneous data.”

The need for speed

The need for data speed has inspired O'Reilly to come up with a new phrase, “Web squared,” to describe the evolution of the Web as we know and use it. O'Reilly and John Battelle, founder of Federated Media Publishing, coined it in a white paper preceding their Web 2.0 Summit conference in San Francisco next month.

2009/09/222009/09/22

Contributing Editor: Oso (Bear in Spanish)

Authors & Editors

Our contributing editor on ethics and government-contractor relations desires to remain anonymous.

With multiple graduate degrees across information science and arts, Oso is a veteran of the commercial intelligence sector. He eschews politics, but when asked, seeks the common sense answer most verifiable by real facts.

He reads broadly, especially poetry and fiction, but with a proper leavening of non-fiction and a special interest in religion and more recently, intelligence and counterintelligence as it pertains to religions specifically.

Category: Journal ISSN 1078-1935

Journal: Fighting against ourselves in Afghanistan