08 Wild Cards – Page 145 – Public Intelligence Blog

Plant operator Tokyo Electric Power Co. also acknowledged that one of the factors contributing to a rapid meltdown of reactor cores was the failure to keep emergency batteries safe from the tsunami, preventing a key emergency cooling system from performing its intended function.

Meanwhile, Tepco said one of the key causes of a rapid meltdown at Unit No. 1 was the failure of two emergency cooling mechanisms—the suppression pool and the isolation condenser—to perform their intended functions.

PAKISTAN: Pakistan's nuclear surge exposed

Indian slam, satellite and video, 100% jump by 2021.

sweden storage — Click on Image to Enlarge

SWEDEN: Sweden's Holding Tank For Nuclear Waste

“We have here about 2,000 tons that you are looking (at), and you can stand here as long as you want to,” she tells me before quickly adding, “If we take one of these bundles out of the water I will give you 20 seconds to leave this room alive.”

USA: US reactor outages 50 pct above late-spring average

USA: U.S. Nuclear Output Falls as Entergy, Progress Shut Reactors

Twenty- five of the nation’s 104 reactors were offline.

USA: 75% of Americans Have Never Heard of Climate-Gate, Study Reveals

Prior Updates, Graphics, and Original Overviews Below the Line

Continue reading “Nuclear/Climate Change: CLOSED 17 May 2011”

2011/05/172016/03/26

REVOLUTION 2.0 CLOSED 17 May 2011

08 Wild Cards, Autonomous Internet, Cultural Intelligence, YouTube

syria mass grave — Click on Image to Enlarge

16 May 2011

BAHRAIN: How radical are Bahrain's Shia?

EGYPT: Could Egypt's revolution become mirage in the desert?

IRAN-BAHRAIN: Iranian ships carrying aid to Bahrain turned back in Persian Gulf

IRAN-SYRIA: ‘Nakba' clashes: Iran, Syria trying to turn Arab Spring fury into attacks on Israel?

ISRAEL: The Arab Revolution is knocking at Israel's door

syria fleeing — Click on Image to Enlarge

LEBANON-SYRIA: Syrian soldiers who defected to Lebanon are arrested

LEBANON-SYRIA: Hundreds flee Syria crackdown to Lebanon

PALESTINE: Arab spring puts Palestine back on agenda

PALESTINE-ISRAEL-MALAYSIA: Malaysian aid ship to Palestine attacked by Israeli naval forces

SYRIA: Syria: mass grave found in Dera'a

SYRIA: Bashar Assad Is Almost Illegitimate

YEMEN: Yemeni MPs establish coalition to support revolution for change

Past Dots Below the Line; Basics on Revolution At the End

Continue reading “REVOLUTION 2.0 CLOSED 17 May 2011”

2011/05/152011/05/15

Niall Ferguson’s 4 Reasons Why US Dominance Is Over

08 Wild Cards, Corruption, Cultural Intelligence, Government, Military, Misinformation & Propaganda, Money, Banks & Concentrated Wealth, Policies, Power Behind-the-Scenes/Special Interests, Threats, Waste (materials, food, etc)

Missing is the lack of integrity of the US Government…..

Niall Ferguson's 4 Reasons Why US Dominance Is Over

Jeff Cox, 12 May 2011, CNBC

LAS VEGAS—The era of US economic dominance is rapidly coming to an end as an “American Gothic” age sets in and China becomes the new global leader, economic historian Niall Ferguson said.

. . . . . .

01 The “mother of all Keynsian fiscal binges” in which the government spent nearly $1 trillion on stimulus from which there will be a “hangover” with only the timing at question.

02 A “massive monetary binge” in which the Federal Reserve ultimately will print money to the tune of nearly $3 trillion.

03 An ensuing spike in commodity prices, a process that has gone on virtually unabated since the beginning of Fed intervention and for which there has been a recent pullback.

04 China “is not the Soviet Union,” meaning the nation doesn’t have the same destabilizing economic conditions that brought down the former Communist republic.

Read full article….

Phi Beta Iota: Mr. Ferguson is correct on his four factors, but leaves out much more. The loss of integrity across not just the US Government but across every major “tribe” comprising the US nation-state (see our “Paradigms of Failure” and also “Legitimate Grievances“) is the root problem Within that is the collapse of education, the ruthless export of jobs that could have been kept in the USA if infrastructure had been developed properly, the looming private debt collapse (defaults of credit cards and everything else), and the deep social challenge of dealing with several hundred thousand returning veterans who are mentally and physically ill, facing unemployment, and rapidly discovering that their pain and suffering was for nothing.

2011/05/142011/05/14

Is ‘Arab Spring’ Coming To Kabul?

08 Wild Cards, 11 Society, Advanced Cyber/IO, Civil Society, Counter-Oppression/Counter-Dictatorship Practices, Cultural Intelligence, Ethics, InfoOps (IO), IO Sense-Making, Methods & Process, Mobile

Is ‘Arab Spring' Coming To Kabul?

Radio Free Europe, 13 May 2011

The recent emergence of the first, large-scale Facebook movement among Afghan university students calling for reform can't help but raise the question — will the wave of antigovernment dissent in the Middle East reach Afghanistan?

Since March, some 1,500 university students in Kabul, and another 3,000 elsewhere around the country, have “friended” the Facebook page “Reformists.” There, they meet daily for discussions about how to exert grassroots pressure on the government — pressure that barely exists in Afghanistan today.

In some ways, the movement is very much like similar Facebook groups in the Arab world.

Engineers of India-Afghanistan vs China-Pakistan

02 China, 03 India, 04 Inter-State Conflict, 08 Wild Cards, 12 Water, Advanced Cyber/IO, Cultural Intelligence, Earth Intelligence, Government, IO Mapping, IO Multinational, IO Sense-Making, Methods & Process, Military, Peace Intelligence, Strategy

India-China-Pakistan: Indian intelligence agencies say they have credible evidence that several hundred Chinese working in Pakistan-occupied Kashmir are People's Liberation Army engineers, the Times of India reported 12 May.

According to the report, Indian intelligence agencies are verifying that the engineers are engaged with military construction projects, such as bunkers, and said the presence of military engineers in civilian construction activities carried out by China in other countries is “unusual,” an intelligence source said. The information about the engineers was part of an assessment presented by the Indian Army to the Indian prime minister, defense minister and other senior officials weeks ago.

Comment: This is the first press report of Chinese military engineers in Pakistan's portion of Kashmir. Chinese engineers are working on road construction in far northern Pakistan which borders China, but no engineering agreements are known that cover Pakistani Kashmir.

India-Afghanistan: India has committed about $1.5 billion to Afghanistan for developmental assistance and plans to commit another $500 million over the next five years, Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh said on 12 May. Priority areas for the aid will be social programs, agriculture and infrastructure, according to Singh

India strongly supports Afghanistan's peace and reconciliation efforts with the Taliban, Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh told Afghan President Hamid Karzai during Singh's two-day visit to Kabul. Singh told Karzai and senior Afghan officials that New Delhi is Kabul's “neighbor and partner in development.” He expressed support for Afghanistan's “unity, integrity and prosperity

Comment: The two news stores above help explain Pakistan's dogged support for the Taliban and other anti-Kabul movements and its anxiety about India. India supported the Northern Alliance of Uzbek and Tajik tribes against the Pashtun Taliban when Karzai still was working for the Taliban, before he switched sides.

The presence of Indian advisors and influence west of Pakistan confronts Pakistani strategists with the prospect of fighting on two fronts in a putative future war, with no strategic depth because Pakistan is so narrow. More importantly, the Indian Border Roads Organization (BRO) has thousands of workers and Indian Army engineers working on the “infrastructure” projects in Afghanistan about which Prime Minister Singh spoke. BRO seems to concentrate on improving the roads in Afghan provinces that border Pakistan.

Indian motives in helping Afghanistan are far from altruistic, just as are those of Iran. Both states have provided aid to the Northern Alliance and the Afghan government, based on their strategic calculations to restrain Pakistan and especially prevent it from annexing the Pashtun regions of Afghanistan.

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2011/05/132011/05/13

Iran–and the USA–Blew Arab Spring, Both Irrelevant

02 Diplomacy, 05 Iran, 08 Wild Cards, Cultural Intelligence, Government, IO Impotency

Iran-Arab Spring: For the record. The head of the parliamentary Committee for National Security and Foreign Policy said on 12 May that the Iranian government was not dynamic in supporting regional uprisings. Alaeddin Boroujerdi said Iran's diplomatic system was not active enough initially but that the activity has started and Foreign Minister Ali Akbar Salehi has begun his regional visits. Although the government's steps to aid regional uprisings were delayed, Boroujerdi said it is good that such measures have started.

Comment: Iran was caught by surprise by the Arab cell-phone uprisings so much so that it was unable to support Shiite risings in the Eastern Province of Saudi Arabia as well as in Bahrain. Boroujerdi primarily was referring to these two regions, implying that Iran missed an opportunity to spread the dominion of Shia Islam to the western banks of the Persian Gulf.

The statement is an admission of an intelligence failure in Iran, coupled with hubris. No secular Arab uprisings, including in Syria, have looked to Iran for guidance. Even the Alawite Baathists of Syria have little use for the wisdom of Persian ayatollahs.

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Continue reading “Iran–and the USA–Blew Arab Spring, Both Irrelevant”

2011/05/122011/05/12

Cooperation Is Pledged By Nations Of the Arctic

06 Russia, 08 Wild Cards, Advanced Cyber/IO, Analysis, Budgets & Funding, Collective Intelligence, Communities of Practice, Earth Intelligence, Ethics, History, InfoOps (IO), Intelligence (government), Journalism/Free-Press/Censorship, Maps, Methods & Process, Open Government, Policies, Policy, Politics of Science & Science of Politics, Real Time, Reform, Research resources, Serious Games, Standards, Strategy, Technologies, Threats, Tools

dynamaxion classic — Click on Image to Enlarge

Cooperation Is Pledged By Nations Of the Arctic

By STEVEN LEE MYERS

New York Times, May 12, 2011

NUUK, Greenland — The eight Arctic nations pledged Thursday to create international protocols to prevent and clean up offshore oil spills in areas of the region that are becoming increasingly accessible to exploration because of a changing climate.

The Arctic Council — the United States, Russia, Canada, Iceland, Denmark, Norway, Finland and Sweden — said the protocols would be modeled on a separate agreement signed here in Nuuk on Thursday to coordinate search-and-rescue operations over 13 million square miles of ocean.