Policies – Page 716 – Public Intelligence Blog

NightWatch Puzzler. How would US forces use unpiloted aircraft for tactical support in a Korean fight in which the US would not have unchallenged control of the airspace? This is a question raised by Air Force Lt Gen David Deptula, the USAF intelligence chief, in multiple presentations. What would be the fall back resource for tactical intelligence collection?
The questions are not about North Korean air force capabilities, but about the tens of thousands of very effective shoulder-fired anti-aircraft missiles that have been used to shoot down off course US helicopters three times in the past 50 years. North Korea is useful in reminding folks that conventional war threats persist and make counterinsurgency look like choir practice.

NightWatch
NightWatch is an executive level intelligence recap drawn from domestic and international reporting provided free five nights a week via an informative email.

Mr. John McCreary is the NightWatch editor. John spent 38 years serving the Department of Defense Intelligence as a strategic analyst, most of that time in the Directorate of Intelligence (J2) office of the Joint Staff serving the Chairman, Joint Chiefs of Staff (JCS) and the Secretary of Defense.

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NIGHTWATCH Archives

2010/05/272010/06/03

Online Event: June 3, noon eastern time on the Future of Water & Energy from IEEE

05 Energy, 12 Water

Online Event: E = H20, A 24-Hour Live Experiment

From the IEEE Spectrum website: By the year 2030, the 8 billion people on Earth will face an annual water shortfall of 2700 billion cubic liters, and the world will demand 45 percent more energy than it does now. We can't solve one problem without solving the other. Join thousands of IEEE members
online starting 3 June 2010 at 12 noon ET (5 p.m. UTC) in a massively multiplayer forecasting experiment dubbed E = H20. Whether
you have 5 hours or 5 minutes, you can help explore the future at the intersection of water and energy.

About This Experiment:
E = H20 is a collaboration between IEEE Spectrum magazine and the Institute for the Future's Signtific Lab, a microforecasting platform developed by the Institute for the Future to foster open discussion about the future of science and technology.
Register

Also See http://water.signtific.org

2010/05/262010/06/03

Gulf Oil Plume Video-Ticker, Maps, and Photos + PBS Suggestion-Collection from the Public

03 Environmental Degradation, 05 Energy, 12 Water, Maps, Photography, Policies, Videos/Movies/Documentaries

+ Suggestions from the public on what to do being posted at PBS NewsHour's YouTube channel (over 1,700 posts)

2010/05/262010/05/26

Journal: Israel Exposed on Nuclear Warheads Back to 1975

08 Wild Cards, 10 Security

editor spinney time — Chuck Spinney Recommends

Nuclear Offer to Apartheid Regime Blows Diplomatic Cover Israel's Nukes Out of the Shadows

By JONATHAN COOK

Counterpunch, 26 May 2010

Nazareth. Israel faces unprecedented pressure to abandon its official policy of “ambiguity” on its possession of nuclear weapons as the international community meets at the United Nations in New York this week to consider banning such arsenals from the Middle East. Israel’s equivocal stance on its atomic status was shattered by reports on Monday that it offered to sell nuclear-armed Jericho missiles to South Africa’s apartheid regime back in 1975.

The revelations are deeply embarrassing to Israel given its long-standing opposition to signing the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, arguing instead that it is a “responsible power” that would never misuse nuclear weapons technologies if it acquired them. Reports of Israel’s nuclear dealings with apartheid South Africa will also energise a draft proposal from Egypt to the UN non-proliferation review conference that Israel — as the only nuclear power in the region — be required to sign the treaty.

Israeli officials are already said to be discomfited by Washington’s decision earlier this month to agree a statement with other UN Security Council members calling for the establishment of a Middle East zone free of nuclear arms.

Read entire story

2010/05/25

Reference: Re-Inventing Fire

08 Wild Cards, Collective Intelligence, Communities of Practice, Earth Intelligence, Ethics, Policies

: Full Source Online

Energy-related economic, security, and environmental threats are intensifying the national conversation about how to regain energy leadership and competitiveness, restore jobs and prosperity, and build a secure and climate-safe energy system.

Yet America lacks a comprehensive vision of how a market economy can achieve these transformational goals.

RMI has that vision, and is now building its detailed roadmap, which we call Reinventing Fire™. This strategy will bring together RMI’s 28 years of innovation and engage the world in our most ambitious and important work yet—using whole-system thinking and integrative design to move the U.S. off fossil fuels by 2050, led by business for profit.

Phi Beta Iota: This is righteous good stuff. It does not go far enough. Agriculture & Water as well as Health & Society are other points on the compass that must be addressed coherently and simultaneously. That will not happen without the restoration of integrity (not just of honor but of thinking). We salute the Rocky Mountain Institute for taking the fist viable step in the right direction.

2010/05/242010/05/24

Joseph Stiglitz, Bank Secrecy, Corruption, and Financing of Atrocities

03 Economy, 09 Terrorism, 10 Transnational Crime, 9/11 research, Corruption, Research resources, Secrecy & Politics of Secrecy, Videos/Movies/Documentaries

Video: Joseph Stiglitz talks about offshore tax evasion (3:18 point of the video Stiglitz mentions an August 2001 veto by the Bush administration on an OECD bank secrecy reduction convention).

Prof. Stiglitz is a Nobel Laureate, former Chief Economist of the World Bank and former head of the Council of Economic Advisors to President Clinton.

Here is a transcript of the most interesting parts of the video

Video with authors of the Three Trillion Dollar War

2010/05/202010/05/20

Journal: Brazil, Turkey, Iran Blow Off USA–Righteously

01 Brazil, 02 Diplomacy, 05 Energy, 05 Iran, 08 Wild Cards, 10 Security

This important essay by Ray McGovern makes a compelling case for the recommendation he makes last two paragraphs which are repeated in italics below:

“As a former CIA analyst, I hope that Obama would have the presence of mind to order a fast-track special National Intelligence Estimate on the implications of the Iran-Brazil-Turkey agreement for U.S. national interests and those of the countries of the Middle East.

Obama needs an unvarnished assessment of the agreement’s possible benefits (and its potential negatives) as counterweight to the pro-Israel lobbying that will inevitably descend on the White House and State Department.”

US, Israel Challenged on Iran

by Ray McGovern, Antiwar.com,May 20, 2010

The times may be a-changin’ — at least a bit — with the United States and Israel no longer able to dictate to the rest of the world how crises in the Middle East must be handled, though the new reality has been slow to dawn on Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and her neocon friends in Congress and the U.S. media.

They may think they are still in control, still the smart ones looking down at upstarts like the leaders of Turkey and Brazil who had the audacity to ignore U.S. warnings and press ahead with diplomacy to head off a possible new war, this one over Iran.

On Monday, Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan and Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva announced success in persuading Iran to send roughly 50 percent of its low-enriched uranium to Turkey in exchange for higher-enriched uranium that would be put to peaceful medical uses.

http://original.antiwar.com/mcgovern/2010/05/19/us-israel-challenged-on-iran/

Category: Policies

NIGHTWATCH Extract: USAF and UAVs–Aw Shucks