Category: Policies

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Post-Katrina New Orleans Myths & Off-Shore Drilling

03 Environmental Degradation, 05 Energy, Geospatial, Graphics
Planned and deployed drill sites and oil spill coverage
Drill rig


The Katrina Myth;
the Truth about a thoroughly unnatural disaster

Related:

Center for Public Integrity project on recent oil spill (May 11)

The Center for Public Integrity partnered with ABC News to reveal the serious lack of government and industry preparedness for the BP oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico. Exclusively-obtained government reports about a series of spill exercises — one as recently as March 25 — warned of a lack of tools to contain a spewing oil well in deep water and of bureaucratic confusion in declaring a “Spill of National Significance” that activates a full federal response. The Center's report was part of ABC's Nightline program on Tuesday, and was prominently featured on The Blotter, a blog written by ABC News' chief investigative reporter, Brian Ross.

As part of the oil spill drill story, the Center experimented with an online library on our website to share investigative materials with readers. We posted the U.S. Coast Guard's after-action reports on past oil spill training exercises using DocumentCloud — an index of primary source documents and a tool for annotating, organizing and publishing them on the web.

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Event: 8-12 June Narobi Africa Agriculture GIS Week 2010

01 Agriculture, 03 Economy, Africa, Geospatial
event info

Jointly organized by the Consortium for Spatial Information (CSI) of the Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research (CGIAR), HarvestChoice, and the Agricultural Geospatial Commons (AGCommons) Program, the event builds on the success of last year’s meeting. However, AAGW 2010 has a broader scope and will be presented as a “GIS ShareFair”, complete with a market place that will include exhibitors, training sessions, thematic workshops, presentation sessions, CGIAR Spatial Science Sessions, the third gathering of WhereCampAfrica, and the unveiling of the AGCommons service bureau.

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EVENT: 9-16 Oct, Univ Passau Germany, Economics of Corruption 2010: Lecture and Workshop in Good Governance and Reform

03 Economy, 09 Justice, Corruption, Government, Open Government
event info

Training and qualifying practitioners, researchers and students in anti-corruption is increasingly requested, utterly needed, but still in its infancy. For many years now we developed a training program that fills this gap, joining the world of theory with the world of practice. An analysis of political, economic and organizational incentives allows participants to obtain a profound understanding of the forces that are at play.

Survey techniques and statistical analysis confront theory with data. Interactive tools such as games, poster presentations and case studies involve participants and make them acquainted with today's challenges. Prof. Johann Graf Lambsdorff and his team have spearheaded models for reform related to such issues as contract penalties, compliance systems, debarment, procurement, leniency and corporate liability. Participants are introduced into this body of research.

This international event continues to be offered on a pro bono basis. It is directed towards anti-corruption policymakers and practitioners, as well as towards graduate and post-graduate students and faculty in the social sciences.

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Reference: Invisible Empire New World Order DVD + RECAP

08 Wild Cards, 10 Security, Corruption, Cultural Intelligence, DHS, Director of National Intelligence et al (IC), DoD, Government, InfoOps (IO), Intelligence (government), IO Deeds of War, Methods & Process, Military, Movies, Officers Call, Power Behind-the-Scenes/Special Interests, Secrecy & Politics of Secrecy, Strategy, United Nations & NGOs, Waste (materials, food, etc)

Invisible Empire A New World Order Defined Full

2 hours, 14 minutes, 1 second — free online, click on title above

Jason Bermas [creator or Loose Change movie] presents Invisible Empire: A New World Order Defined produced by Alex Jones. The film can be ordered here http://infowars-shop.stores.yahoo.net/inemnewwoord.html or viewed free online (click on title above).

Summary and See Also Below the Line.

Continue reading “Reference: Invisible Empire New World Order DVD + RECAP”

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Journal: CIA Black Prisons–UN Report…

08 Wild Cards, 09 Justice, 10 Security, 11 Society, Ethics, Government
Berto Jongman Recommends...

AGM Countdown: In the run up to Amnesty International’s Annual General Meeting in New Orleans this weekend, the Science for Human Rights program will be posting a new blog entry every day this week. All of the projects presented this week—and many more—will be at display in New Orleans.

In its most extensive study of secret detention practices to date, the UN released a 222-page report on the practice of secret detention in dozens of countries. The report was to be presented to the Human Rights Council in March but the Council has agreed to postpone the discussion until June. The detailed study conducted by four independent UN human rights experts accuses the Bush administration of utilizing practices in severe violation of international law.

Full Story Online
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Journal: Israel, Neo-Cons, Big Oil, Iraq, & Green

05 Energy, 08 Wild Cards, Analysis, Commerce, Commercial Intelligence, Earth Intelligence, Ethics, Government, Military, Strategy
Chuck Spinney

In my last blaster (here), I raised a question of whether the Israelis were trying to hijack the Green Lobby or whether they were ready for the rubber room.  This was made in response to a report by Jonathan Cook that contended Israel was greenwashing war on terror.  It turns out that I may have phrased this question in naive, simplistic terms, if my good friend Pierre Sprey (a justifiably well known weapons analyst, mathematician, and recording entrepreneur) is correct, Israel's motives for  trying to hijack the Green Lobby can be viewed in a larger, longer range context.  Below is his most interesting analysis of Israel's motives for greenwashing the war on terror: Chuck

—–[Comment by Pierre Sprey]—–

I totally agree that the currently faddish alternate energy sources are ludicrously uneconomical and, for the most part, environmentally harmful. The only alternate source that could almost completely supplant oil and that actually makes economic and environmental sense, natural gas, is currently among the most unfashionable.

Nevertheless, there's an important larger perspective to Israel's dead serious push to raise huge amounts of capital (guess where?) to produce non-oil based energy from trendy green sources in large enough quantities to reduce worldwide oil demand significantly.

That perspective is simple: unbeknownst to most, the absolute highest priority objective of Israeli foreign policy, from 1949 to today, has been to break the Seven Sisters oil cartel's stranglehold on world oil production in order to collapse the world price of oil. From Israel's point of view, that's a perfectly rational strategic objective–and, almost certainly, the only Israeli objective I know of that would be a major benefit to the world.

Continue reading “Journal: Israel, Neo-Cons, Big Oil, Iraq, & Green”

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Reference: Intelligence Support to Small Arms Acquisition–A Brilliant Indictment

10 Security, Analysis, DoD, Methods & Process, Military, Reform, Strategy, Threats, Tools
Full Paper Online

Marcus Aurelius:

(1) US consciously changed from standard main battle rifles firing “full military cartridges” (ie., M-14/7.62×51 NATO, M-1 Garand/cal. 30 M-1) to assault rifles (AR-15, M-16, Stoner System) in the 1960s as we attempted to optimize for short-range engagements in the constrained mountainous/jungle environments of Southeast Asia.  At the time, our primary allies were slight of physical stature;

(2) Concurrently, training and engagement doctrine shifted from carefully aimed individual shots to volume of fire (bursts of various numbers of rounds, the “spray and slay” technique) and various “point and shoot” techniques such as “instinctive aiming,” “quick kill,” etc.;

(3) Ammunition followed suit and emphasis in terminal ballistics shifted from accuracy and kinetic energy to volume of fire and bullet yaw/fragmentation; (4) I attach the SAMS paper by MAJ Ehrhart cited in the article.)

Phi Beta Iota: This one paper is a superb indictment of US DoD leadership from the Secretary of Defense, who claims he does not do “maintenance” but is in fact overseeing “business as usual” for Lockheed et all, to the Undersecretaries (Intelligence does not do intelligence support to acquisitions; Acquisitions could care less about inexpensive individual systems; and Policy simply does not have a clue) to the service leaders responsible for training, equipping, and organizing the forces to be sent into battle by the Combatant Commanders.  The Strategic Generalizations developed by the Marine Corps Intelligence Center in 1989 remain valid–and ignored.

Related Media Article:

April 2, 2010

Army Report: GIs Outgunned In Afghanistan

By David Wood

American troops are often outgunned by Afghan insurgents because they lack the precision weapons, deadly rounds, and training needed to kill the enemy in the long-distance firefights common in Afghanistan's rugged terrain, according to an internal Army study.

Politics Daily Full Story Online

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