Today I had the pleasure of sitting down for a second time with Dr. Greg Newby, director of one of America's top supercomputing centers, this one in Alaska and operated by the University of Alaska. He has some ideas about Arctic information collection, prcoessing, analysis, and SHARING that are breath-taking; I attribute this in part to his also being the current lead for the Gutenberg Project, whose founder died recently. If there is one person on the planet that understands supercomputing, open everything, and the potential of the cloud to radcially empower all members of any M4IS2 endeavor, that person is Dr. Greg Newby. He is in Washington until Friday morning when I drive him to the airport, and can be reached via email at <gbnewby@alaska.edu>. Tomorrow he meets with the US State Department representative to the Arctic Council. At this time he has no meetings scheduled with US Navy or US Coast Guard points of contact for Arctic matters and would welcome being contacted directly.
Dr. Greg Newby Click on Image to Enlarge
I confess to being delighted by how he has adapted my eight-tribes concept and also with his diligence in pursuing a global initiative to make all data available via a MOSAIC real-world “game” to be created by Medard Gabel, co-creator with Buckminster Fuller of the analog World Game, and architect of both the existing UN Earth Dashboard, and the conceptualized digital EarthGame that needs only a staff of six and an annual budget of $3 million to be created.
Afghanistan-NATO: The withdrawal of Western forces from Afghanistan could come sooner than expected, according to NATO Secretary General Rasmussen. He conceded that the recent Taliban strategy of ‘green on blue' killings had been successful in sapping NATO morale.
In an interview with The Guardian Rasmussen acknowledged he felt pressure for a faster withdrawal from Afghanistan and said all options were being studied and should be clear within three months.
Rasmussen also said NATO's forces in Afghanistan have recommenced joint operations with Afghan forces. He said, “Almost all partnered activities have now been resumed and that reflects an assessment made by our commanders as regards the overall security situation.”
Special Comment: Two developments indicate the Coalition command does not know how to deal with the surge in green-on-blue murders. The first is the Afghan government's issuance of a cultural guide to Afghan forces advising them to not over-react to the cultural insensitivity of the Western soldiers.
A shocking new Federal Security Service (FSB) report circulating in the Kremlin today alleges that an entire American family that sought Russian protection from the Obama regime was massacred by US intelligence agents within hours of their planned escape from the United States.
According to this report, on 22 September a woman who indentified herself as Kathleen Peterson visited the Russian Centre for Science and Culture in Washington D.C. under the pretense of signing up to take a course titled Russian Language Express Course A-1 for beginners set to begin on 26 September whereupon she approached director Yuriy Zaytsev and “slipped into his hand,” while shaking it, an encrypted computer thumb drive covered in a small note that said “please help us we’re in danger.”
Following “standard protocols” for such instances, when Russian officials are approached on American soil by US citizens, this report continues, the note and thumb drive in question were “processed” according to “established procedures” and revealed the plans of Mrs. Peterson, her husband Albert [both pictured 2nd photo left], and their two children, Mathew and Christopher, to leave Washington D.C. on 23 September on a flight to Paris where it was requested they be met by Russian security personal as this family feared their lives were in danger.
Within 24 hours of Mrs. Peterson passing her information to Russian officials, this report says, she, her husband and two children were violently gunned down in their Fairfax County Virginia home on 23 September with this massacre being blamed by US police officials on a murder-suicide plot initiated by her husband, Albert, with at least one Western news source, quoting a source indentified only as “Maggie L.”, stating this tragedy was due to his, Albert’s, fears over Obama being reelected as US President.
According to US news sources, Albert Peterson was a longtime employee of the US defense giant Northrop Grumman until he resigned in 2009, and Kathleen Peterson was employed by the US defense contracting firm Blackbird Technologies located in Herndon, Virginia.
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This FSB report further notes Blackbird Technologies “tracking and tagging” of those US citizens destined to be placed in America’s most feared prisons called Communication Management Units, or CMU’s. These secretive political prisons for “domestic terrorists” radically restricts prisoner communications with the outside world to levels that rival, or exceed, the most restrictive facilities in the country, including the dreaded “Supermax”, and any other such prison operating in the Western world.
The financial and banking industries are on high alert tonight as a massive cyberattack continues, with potentially millions of customers of Bank of America, PNC and Wells Fargo finding themselves blocked from banking online.
“There is an elevated level of threat,” said Doug Johnson, a vice president and senior adviser of the American Bankers Association. “The threat level is now high.”
“This is twice as large as any flood we have ever seen,” said Dick Clarke, an ABC News consultant and former cybersecurity czar.
Sources told ABC News that the so-called denial of service attacks had been caused by hackers from the Middle East who had secretly transmitted signals commandeering thousands of computers worldwide.
A group of purported hackers in the Middle East has claimed credit for problems at the websites of both banks, citing the online video mocking the founder of Islam. One security source called that statement “a cover” for the Iranian government’s operations.
The attack is described by one source, a former U.S. official familiar with the attacks, as being “significant and ongoing” and looking to cause “functional and significant damage.” Also, one source suggested the attacks were in response to U.S. sanctions on Iranian banks.
Senior U.S. officials acknowledge that Iranian attacks have been the subject of intense interest by U.S. intelligence for several weeks. Last week, the Joint Chiefs of Staff’s Intelligence Directorate, known as J-2, confirmed continuing Iranian cyber attacks against U.S. financial institutions in a report described as “highly classified.”
Five people have been isolated in a hospital in Denmark with symptoms of a new viral respiratory illness from the same family as the deadly SARS virus.
EXTRACTS:
Petersen said those admitted were a family of four where the father had been to Saudi Arabia, and an unrelated person who had been to Qatar. Two of those with symptoms were under the age of five.
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SARS swept out of China in 2003, killing more than 800 people worldwide.
Sure, Iran could divert a few tons of 3.5% or a ton of 20% enriched uranium hexaflouride gas for enrichment to 90+%. But what then?
No one has ever made a nuclear weapon from gas. It must be converted to metal and fabricated into components which are then assembled with high explosives.
Iran lacks experience with and facilities for these processes which are very dangerous because of potential for a criticality accident or nuclear explosion. Iran would not jeopardize its important, fully safeguarded nuclear programs by an attempt to have a deliverable, one kiloton yield nuclear weapon ten to fifteen years later.
This report is the result of nine months of research by the International Human Rights and Conflict Resolution Clinic of Stanford Law School (Stanford Clinic) and the Global Justice Clinic at New York University School of Law (NYU Clinic). Professor James Cavallaro and Clinical Lecturer Stephan Sonnenberg led the Stanford Clinic team; Professor Sarah Knuckey led the NYU Clinic team. Adelina Acuña, Mohammad M. Ali, Anjali Deshmukh, Jennifer Gibson, Jennifer Ingram, Dimitri Phillips, Wendy Salkin, and Omar Shakir were the student research team at Stanford; Christopher Holland was the student researcher from NYU. Supervisors Cavallaro, Sonnenberg, and Knuckey, as well as student researchers Acuña, Ali, Deshmukh, Gibson, Salkin, and Shakir participated in the fact-finding investigations to Pakistan.
EXTRACT (One Sentence from Each Summary Paragraph):
First, while civilian casualties are rarely acknowledged by the US government, there is significant evidence that US drone strikes have injured and killed civilians
Second, US drone strike policies cause considerable and under-accounted-for harm to the daily lives of ordinary civilians, beyond death and physical injury.
Third, publicly available evidence that the strikes have made the US safer overall is ambiguous at best.
Fourth, current US targeted killings and drone strike practices undermine respect for the rule of law and international legal protections and may set dangerous precedents.
