11 Society – Page 348 – Public Intelligence Blog

2009/12/042009/12/04

Worth a Look: MicroPlace Giving to the Poor

11 Society, Civil Society, Commerce, Gift Intelligence, Key Players, Methods & Process, Mobile, Non-Governmental, Peace Intelligence, Real Time, Threats

MicroPlace for Poor

Level of poverty

Poor | Very poor | Extremely poor

Green Serves rural areas Focus on women Fair trade

Financial My financial return 1% – 3% | 4% – 6%

When I get repaid Anytime | < 1 yr | 1 – 3 yrs | > 3 yrs

My money is going to Single institution | Multiple institutions

Support small coffee growers in the mountains of Nicaragua

Support Fair Trade Coffee Farmers in Tanzania

Phi Beta Iota: Evidently an EBay initative with a PayPal front end, this impresses us. Subject to audit, it is precisely what we were thinking of (see our Denmark Briefing) as a means of connecting the one billion rich (80% of whom do not give to charity now) with the five billion poor at the household item level of need. The major FLAW with with implementation is that it relies on intermediaries that will suck off 50% or more of the actual value. Still needed: the Global Range of Needs Table. This would also benefit from a Twitter application and a near real time “close by can do easy” option.

2009/12/032009/12/03

Reference: Measuring Success and Failure in Terrorism and Counter-Terrorism–US Government Metrics of the Global War on Terror (GWOT)

08 Wild Cards, 09 Terrorism, 10 Security, 11 Society, Academia, Analysis, Articles & Chapters, Government, Law Enforcement, Methods & Process, Peace Intelligence

Alex P. Schmid, one of a handful of trully expert scholars in the field of terrorism and counter-terrorism, and his colleague Rashmi Singh, have created a summary that is devasting on multiple fronts. The “Global War on Terror” or GWOT has lasted longer than World Wars I and II combined; the money expended (the authors do not include the military costs of occupying Afghanistan and Iraq) has been enormous, and in all that time, no one has defined the metrics by which to measure the endeavor. The chapter in included in After the War on Terror: Regional and Multilateral Perspectives on Counter-TerrorismStrategy

See also:

Search: Strategic Analytic Model

Search: QDR “four forces after next”

2009/12/01

Journal: Vermont Commons, Secession, & Collapse

05 Civil War, 08 Wild Cards, 11 Society, Civil Society, Collective Intelligence, Ethics, Reform

Vermont Commons Home Page

Secession is Constitutional, Abraham Lincoln's unconstitutional pillaging and looting of the South not-with-standing. Few are sufficiently educated to actually know that Lincoln did not free the slaves of the north and west and did not have the Constitutional authority to suspend habeas corpus, conscript men of the north, borrow money to wage war on peacefully seceeeding members of the Union of STATES that voluntarily entered a compact, or to occupy the south by force of arms for twelve years. In Canada the Supreme Court has found for Quebec on the matter of secession, and the Yukon and Northwest Territories are both acutely aware of the options they have. Further North Greenland has declared independence from Denmark. Alaska remains a wild card–Sarah Palin could have been President of the North, but got sucked into the ideological maelstrom of an imploding Republican Party. All that by way to introduction to the Vermont Commons. Maine and Vermont are two of the states most likely to actually seceed from the Union if the US Government does not heal itself fairly soon. The only way to preserve the Union going into the next decade is to rapidly restore the legitimacy and efficacy of governance–this can only be done by getting a grip on reality and devising policies, programs, and budgets in harmony with reality.

Below are some Reviews that bear on the above subject.

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2009/12/012015/05/04

Journal: Whaling Intercept Boat

03 Environmental Degradation, 11 Society, Civil Society, Commerce, Commercial Intelligence, Ethics, Government, Law Enforcement, Methods & Process, Peace Intelligence, Real Time

Los Angeles, CA- At a fundraising event in Los Angeles on Saturday, October 17th, 2009, the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society unveiled their newest ocean defense vessel: the Ady Gil. The vessel, previously known as the Earthrace, is a fast, futuristic looking trimaran that recently set the world record for global circumnavigation. The vessel renaming reflects the ship’s benefactor, Ady Gil, who helped acquire the vessel.

Sea Shepherd is currently preparing for it’s 6th Whale Defense Campaign Operation Waltzing Matilda. The campaign will launch from Australia in early December with Sea Shepherd’s flagship Steve Irwin, which will be accompanied to the Southern Ocean Whale Sanctuary by the new Ady Gil. Together, the ships and the volunteer crew will intervene in illegal Japanese whaling in Antarctica.

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2009/11/252009/11/25

Journal: German Hackers Point to 9-11 Text Messages

08 Wild Cards, 09 Terrorism, 10 Security, 11 Society, Analysis, Collective Intelligence, Communities of Practice, Methods & Process

Files of 9-11 Text Messages

Text messages sent in the hours before and during 9-11 are now becoming available for public examination.

It will take time, but a number of individuals are working through them (remember what the Iranians did with CIA's singular shredded messages) and we anticipate findings within a few months. We've also suggest a quick tag cloud cross-references to time and location.

For the text files themselves, click on Wikileaks logo. For the Reddit discussion click on the Frog.

CNN Catches Up with Phi Beta Iota

2009/11/24

Journal: UK Complicity in torture of its own citizens

09 Justice, 09 Terrorism, 10 Security, 11 Society, Ethics

Full Story Online

Editorial, Wednesday 25 November 2009

Allegations about Britain's role in the torture of its own citizens in Pakistan are not new. They have been made persuasively by our own investigative reporting. What is new in the report published yesterday by Human Rights Watch is the corroboration it obtained from the torturers themselves. Ali Dayan Hasan, HRW's senior south Asia researcher, found sources in Inter-Services Intelligence, the military-controlled spy agency in Pakistan, and the Intelligence Bureau, a civilian-controlled one, to admit they tortured five British citizens at the behest, and with the full knowledge, of British intelligence.

2009/11/24

Journal: A Nation of Naive Inattentive Infidels

08 Wild Cards, 11 Society, Cultural Intelligence, Government, Law Enforcement

Full Op-Ed Online

Lethal Weapon: Islamist Perfidy or Western Naivety?

by Raymond Ibrahim, Pajamas Media, November 23, 2009

The narrator’s enthusiastic talk of NYPD brass standing in awe of the “cadences of the call” makes it difficult to discern exactly which verse is being recited. Only the last few words — qawm al-kaffirin, “nation of infidels” — are crystal clear, raising red flags. Thanks to my trusty Arabic Koranic concordance, I have placed this phrase as part of Koran 2:286, which supplicates Allah “to make us [Muslims] victorious over the nation of infidels.” Bear in mind that, from an Islamist point of view, the United States is the “nation of infidels” par excellence.

And there it is: From an American president who publicly defines his mission by quoting a jihadi-related verse, to American-Muslim leaders who publicly pray for the subjugation of non-Muslims (in the middle of an NYPD auditorium, no less), it is clear that the ultimate threat comes more from Western carelessness and indifference — in a word, naivety — than it does from active Islamist machinations. In short, Islamists peddling misleading interpretations for the word “jihad” is but the very tip of the iceberg.

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