Policies – Page 768 – Public Intelligence Blog

Johann Hari: The three fallacies that have driven the war in Afghanistan

Case for escalating the war is based on premises that turn to dust on inspection

Johann Hari Independent Wednesday, 21 October 2009

Is Barack Obama about to drive his Presidency into a bloody ditch strewn with corpses? The President is expected any day now to announce his decision about the future of the war in Afghanistan. He knows US and British troops have now been stationed in the hell-mouth of Helmand longer than the First and Second World Wars combined – yet the mutterings from the marble halls of Washington DC suggest he may order a troop escalation.

Obama has to decide now whether to side with the American people and the Afghan people calling for a rapid reduction in US force, or with a small military clique demanding a ramping-up of the conflict. The populations of both countries are in close agreement. The latest Washington Post poll shows that 51 per cent of Americans say the war is “not worth fighting” and that ending the foreign occupation will “reduce terrorism”. Only 27 per cent disagree. At the other end of the gun-barrel, 77 per cent of Afghans in the latest BBC poll say the on-going US air strikes are “unacceptable”, and the US troops should only remain if they are going to provide reconstruction assistance rather than bombs.

Continue reading “Journal: Demise of Obama in Afghanistan Part II”

2009/10/212009/10/21

Journal: Strategic Analysis & Culture Matter

08 Wild Cards, 10 Security, 11 Society, Government, Military, Peace Intelligence

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The Afghanistan Problem

The huge cultural misunderstandings between Western forces and the Afghan people make it unlikely any counterinsurgency mission in the countryside will succeed.

By Gilles Dorronsoro

In the countryside, Westerners are essentially perceived as corrupt and threatening to traditional Afghan or Muslim values. Contrary to our self-perception, the villagers see the foreigners as the main providers of insecurity. The presence of coalition troops means IEDs, ambushes and airstrikes, and consequently a higher probability of being killed, maimed or robbed of a livelihood. Any incident quickly reinforces the divide between locals and outsiders, and the Afghan media provide extensive and graphic coverage of botched airstrikes and injured civilians.
Continue reading “Journal: Strategic Analysis & Culture Matter”

2009/10/21

Journal: Electronic Voting Fraud, Failure, & Foolishness

11 Society, Civil Society, Collective Intelligence, Ethics, Government, Methods & Process

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Sequoia Voting Systems hacks self in foot

by Mokurai

Tue Oct 20, 2009

Sequoia Voting Systems has inadvertently released the SQL (Structured Query Language) code for its voting databases. The existence of such code appears to violate Federal voting law. Read the announcement after the jump, just as received on the Open Voting Consortium mailing list earlier today.

The Linux “strings” command was able to peel it apart. Nedit was able to digest 800meg text files. What was revealed was thousands of lines of MS-SQL source code that appears to control or at least influence the logical flow of the election, in violation of a bunch of clauses in the FEC voting system rulebook banning interpreted code, machine modified code and mandating hash checks of voting system code.

I've got it all organized for commentary and download in wiki form at:

Continue reading “Journal: Electronic Voting Fraud, Failure, & Foolishness”

2009/10/202010/07/23

1988-2009 OSINT-M4IS2 TECHINT Chronology

Collaboration Zones, Communities of Practice, Methods & Process, Mobile, Policies, Real Time, Threats

Rock ON, Dude — Steele as Wild Card Speaker

Phi Beta Iota: This started as a short list for the various college and university engineering students that have dialed in, but as we got into it, it became more of a “situational awareness” inventory pulling together both technical “solutions” none of which have been integrated yet, and analytic “requirements” none of which have been satisfied yet.

$75 billion a year for secret intelligence, and we still do not have an analytic desktop toolkit, all-source geospatially and historically and cultural astute back office processing, or global reach to all humans, all minds, all the time. Sucks for us. Let's see what the Smart Mob can do….

We specifically invite suggestions in the Comments for removing items from this list, or for adding items from within this website or from any other website. This is now a work zone. Steele is available to visit any engineering workshop and especially those working on bottom-up clouds like Swarm DPL (transparently scalable distributed programming language).

See also About the Idea, Articles, Briefs, Handbooks, and Historic Contributions. Use the Menu–everything on this stie responds to “OSINT” that is not a good search term. Rock on!

TOTALLY TECH:

2009 Arnold Google: The Digital Gutenberg

2008 Memoranda: Policy-Budget Outreach Tool

2006 USSOCOM Software List and STRONG ANGEL TOOZL

2006 Morville (UK) Ambient Findability Massive Scale Beyond Your Imagination A Recommedned Approach to Creating the World Brain with Instant Recall

Continue reading “1988-2009 OSINT-M4IS2 TECHINT Chronology”

2009/10/202009/10/20

Worth a Look: Bankster

03 Economy, Civil Society, Commerce, Commercial Intelligence, Ethics, Government, Reform, Worth A Look

Site Home Online

On the one-year anniversary of the Banksters blowing a hole in the global economy, no employee of a major American bank or financial institution is behind bars. Compare this to what happened after the Savings and Loan heist almost 20 years ago.

No less than 1,852 S&L officials were prosecuted and 1,072 were jailed. Over 500 CEOs and top officers were indicted. What is going on here? Don't we believe in holding people accountable anymore? Tell the U.S. Department of Justice and the FBI to get cracking! Our motto? TOO BIG TO FAIL, BUT NOT TOO BIG TO GO TO JAIL!

Put an End to Death Bonds

No New Powers for the Fed

Cap Those Interest Rates, 10% is Enough!

Demand Accountability, Fairness, and Security

Phi Beta Iota: Being added to Righteous Sites.

2009/10/202009/10/20

Journal: Information Security Seven Guiding Principles

Collaboration Zones, Communities of Practice, InfoOps (IO), Methods & Process, Mobile, Policies, Real Time

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RSA Executives Offer Seven Guiding Principles To Maximize Megatrends Redefining the Information Security Industry

LONDON, Oct. 20 /PRNewswire/ — RSA® CONFERENCE EUROPE 2009 — Building a
systemic security strategy to help organizations better face challenges and exploit opportunities spurred by next generation technology trends was the theme of the opening keynote at the 2009 RSA Conference Europe. In a joint keynote address, Art Coviello and Christopher Young, President and Senior Vice President, respectively, with RSA, The Security Division of EMC (NYSE: EMC), highlighted the need for organizations to develop a systemic security strategy that treats escalating technology trends not as a burden to be lifted, but as
an unprecedented opportunity to improve security and build a more secure information infrastructure.

The seven principles:

Continue reading “Journal: Information Security Seven Guiding Principles”

2009/10/20

Journal: America’s Shame, Obama’s Failure

01 Poverty, 11 Society, Government

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Revised formula puts 1 in 6 Americans in poverty

Revised formula puts number of poor people at 47.4 million — 7 million more than official rate

A revised formula for calculating medical costs and geographic variations show that approximately 47.4 million Americans last year lived in poverty, 7 million more than the government's official figure.

The disparity occurs because of differing formulas the Census Bureau and the National Academy of Science use for calculating the poverty rate. The NAS formula shows the poverty rate to be at 15.8 percent, or nearly 1 in 6 Americans, according to calculations released this week. That's higher than the 13.2 percent, or 39.8 million, figure made available recently under the original government formula. . . . . . . .

Food stamp assistance currently is at an all-time high of about 36 million.

Continue reading “Journal: America's Shame, Obama's Failure”

Sequoia Voting Systems hacks self in foot

by Mokurai

Tue Oct 20, 2009

RSA Executives Offer Seven Guiding Principles To Maximize Megatrends Redefining the Information Security Industry

Full Story Online Revised formula puts 1 in 6 Americans in poverty

Full Story Online

Revised formula puts 1 in 6 Americans in poverty