Threats – Page 421 – Public Intelligence Blog

2013/05/09

Mini-Me: Air Force Nuclear Rotten; Nuclear Budget Waste to Point of Treason — Where, We Ask, Does the Buck Stop on This Nonsense?

08 Proliferation, Corruption, Idiocy, Ineptitude, Military

Huh?

AP Exclusive: Air Force sidelines 17 nuclear missile officers; commander cites ‘rot’ in system

WASHINGTON — Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel demanded more information Wednesday after the Air Force removed 17 launch officers from duty at a nuclear missile base in North Dakota over what a commander called “rot” in the force. The Air Force struggled to explain, acknowledging concern about an “attitude problem” but telling Congress the weapons were secure.

Huh, Huh?

Proponents of ‘First Strike’ Nuclear War against Iran ROB BILLIONS from Their Own Citizens: Multibillion War Budgets

While the Pentagon’s modernization budget for the pre-emptive nuclear option is a modest ten billion dollars (excluding the outlay by NATO countries). the budget for upgrading the US arsenal of “strategic nuclear offensive forces” is a staggering $352 billion over ten years. (See Russell Rumbaugh and Nathan Cohn,“Resolving Ambiguity: Costing Nuclear Weapons,” Stimson Center Report, June 2012).

These multi-billion military outlays allocated to develop“bigger and better nuclear bombs” are financed by the massive economic austerity measures currently applied in US and NATO countries.

Continue reading “Mini-Me: Air Force Nuclear Rotten; Nuclear Budget Waste to Point of Treason — Where, We Ask, Does the Buck Stop on This Nonsense?”

2013/05/092013/05/09

Stephen E. Arnold: A Fresh Look at Big Data & Big Data (-) Human Factor (+) Transformation (+) RECAP

Access, Advanced Cyber/IO, Architecture, Collective Intelligence, Communities of Practice, Cultural Intelligence, Design, Earth Intelligence, Ethics, Key Players, Peace Intelligence, Policies, Strategy, Threats

A Fresh Look at Big Data

May 8, 2013

Next week I am doing an invited talk in London. My subject is search and Big Data. I will be digging into this notion in this month’s Honk newsletter and adding some business intelligence related comments at an Information Today conference in New York later this month. (I have chopped the number of talks I am giving this year because at my age air travel and the number of 20 somethings at certain programs makes me jumpy.)

I want to highlight one point in my upcoming London talk; namely, the financial challenge which companies face when they embrace Big Data and then want to search the information in the system and search the Big Data system’s outputs.

Notice that precision and recall has not improved significantly over the last 30 years. I anticipate that many search vendors will tell me that their systems deliver excellent precision and recall. I am not convinced. The data which I have reviewed show that over a period of 10 years most systems hit the 80 to 85 percent precision and recall level for content which is about a topic. Content collections composed of scientific, technical, and medical information where the terminology is reasonably constrained can do better. I have seen scores above 90 percent. However, for general collections, precision and recall has not been improving relative to the advances in other disciplines; for example, converting structured data outputs to fancy graphics.

I don’t want to squabble about precision and recall. The main point is that when an organization mashes Big Data with search, two curves must be considered. The first is the complexity curve. The idea is that search is a reasonably difficult system to implement in an effective manner. The addition of a Big Data system adds another complex task. When two complex tasks are undertaken at the same time, the costs go up.

Continue reading “Stephen E. Arnold: A Fresh Look at Big Data & Big Data (-) Human Factor (+) Transformation (+) RECAP”

2013/05/082013/05/08

Neal Rauhauser: Drowning IndoChina

03 Environmental Degradation, Geospatial

Drowning Indochina

Yesterday’s Visualizing 400ppm Carbon Dioxide showed before/after coastline maps of what we can expect given the carbon we have already put into the atmosphere. All of Delaware and Maryland’s eastern shore disappear, Florida south of Gainesville goes for a swim, and the San Francisco Bay reaches Sacramento.

The effects in Indochina and neighboring Bangladesh are even more profound. Yangon, Myanmar (4.4M), Bangkok, Thailand (8.3M), Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam (7.5M), and Phnom Penh, Cambodia (2.3M) will all be submerged if the increase is only 20M and historically we should expect more like 25M at that level of CO2.

Read full post and see maps.

2013/05/07

Neal Rauhauser: Visualizing 400ppm Carbon Dioxide = 20 to 30 Meter Rise in Sea Level?

03 Environmental Degradation

Visualizing 400ppm Carbon Dioxide

If we don’t do it this year we will surely reach 400ppm of atmospheric carbon dioxide by 2014. The last 650,000 years this number has been between 180ppm and 280ppm. The world hasn’t had 400ppm since the Pliocene.

Here are maps of Florida, Delaware, and California with toady’s shoreline, 20 meter rise maps, and 30 meter rise maps. Geological records from the Pliocene indicate seas were 25 meters higher than today. I use the Geology.com sea level map tool to produce this.

Florida is gone south of Orlando with 20m, south of Gainesville if its closer to 30m.

Read full post see other graphics.

2013/05/072013/05/07

Eagle: CIA, Militant Islam, the Chechen Connection — Proxy War on Russia, Trade-Off for Syria?

04 Inter-State Conflict, 05 Civil War, 07 Other Atrocities, 09 Terrorism, Corruption, Government, Idiocy, IO Deeds of War, Law Enforcement

300 Million Talons... — 300 Million Talons…

Global Research will be publishing a series of articles and reports with a view to promoting “Boston Truth”. The underlying objective is to confront and challenge the official version of events concerning the Boston bombings as well as the twisted and convoluted interpretations of the mainstream media.

We invite our readers to endorse “Boston Truth” and spread the word on social media, independent media and blog sites.

Nine thousand heavily armed police including SWAT teams were deployed in a manhunt to capture a 19 year old student at U-Mass, after his brother Tamerlan Tsarnaev, the alleged Boston Marathon terror mastermind was shot dead by police allegedly after a car chase and shoot out with police.

Continue reading “Eagle: CIA, Militant Islam, the Chechen Connection — Proxy War on Russia, Trade-Off for Syria?”

2013/05/062013/05/06

NIGHTWATCH: Afghanistan Army Imploding – South Viet-Nam Redux

04 Inter-State Conflict, 05 Civil War, 08 Wild Cards

Afghanistan: Late last week, The US Special Inspector General for Afghanistan published a quarterly report which included a section on manning in the Afghan National Army. The British newspaper Independent also published UK findings on manning as well, but with a slightly different focus.

The US report indicates the Afghan National Army has gotten smaller in the past year. Strength in March 2012 was But strength in February 2013 was 175,441.

The British reports that attrition in the Afghan National Army is about 30%, or three in every ten soldiers are killed, captured or dismissed for cause. The report also states that 5,000 recruits a month just quit, or annually a third of the current strength of the Afghan National Army.

The Special Inspector General stipulated that accurate and reliable accounting of government forces strength is necessary to help ensure US funds are spent for legitimate and eligible costs. It quoted a US command that there exists no “viable method of validating personnel numbers.”

Comment: The two reports read like Vietnam redux. The US report makes clear that without outside money, almost no Afghan security forces loyal to the government would exist.

NIGHTWATCH KGS Home

Graphic Source

2013/05/052013/05/05

SchwartzReport: Judge Convicted of Selling Teens to Prisons — and Guantanamo Costs Taxpayer $900,000 a Year Per Prisoner

07 Other Atrocities, Corruption, Government, Idiocy, Law Enforcement, Military

This is what prison privatization is leading to. This is not the first case like this of of Judicial corruption. Yet it is full steam ahead for corporate prisons. How can anyone think that corporate prisons was a good idea?

Pennsylvania Judge Sentenced to 28 Years in Prison for Selling Teens to Prisons
LOU COLAGIOVANNI – Examiner (Houston)

Disgraced Pennsylvania judge Mark Ciavarella Jr has been sentenced to 28 years in prison for conspiring with private prisons to sentence juvenile offenders to maximum sentences for bribes and kickbacks which totaled millions of dollars. He was also ordered to pay $1.2 million in restitution.

Read full article.

The necocons' terror-war prison and court system, as should have been obvious from the beginning, is evil. It violates every tenet of the Constitution, and has become a machine that makes enemies. Its outrages recruit and create terrorists.

Continue reading “SchwartzReport: Judge Convicted of Selling Teens to Prisons — and Guantanamo Costs Taxpayer $900,000 a Year Per Prisoner”