Category: Threats

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Event: 28-29 Apr Washington DC International Drone Summit: Killing and Spying by Remote Control

07 Other Atrocities, 10 Security, 11 Society, DoD, Military, Peace Intelligence

Join us in Washington, DC on April 28 and 29 for an “International Drone Summit: Killing and Spying by Remote Control” hosted by CODEPINK, Reprieve, and the Center for Constitutional Rights.

US drone strikes have killed an estimated 3,000 people around the world, including hundreds of civilians, without any judicial process or meaningful oversight, and without any transparency or accountability. The summit's dual objectives are to better inform the public about the reality and significance of the US government's expanding use of both killer and surveillance drones, and to facilitate networks and strategies to resist this expansion.

The Saturday, April 28 program is open to the public and brings together human rights advocates, robotics technology experts, activists, lawyers, scholars and journalists, and shares the stories of people whose families and lives have been directly impacted by remote-controlled drone strikes. This is an all day event with multiple panels beginning at 9am at Mount Vernon Place United Methodist Church, 900 Massachusetts Ave. NW, Washington, DC. See this site for updates on the program, and register here today!

The Sunday, April 29 program is a strategy session for organizations and individuals to network and plan advocacy efforts focused on various aspects of drones, targeted killings and expanding US covert wars. If you are interested in attending this session, please email Ramah Kudaimi at rkudaimi(@ symbol)gmail.com.

Learn more.

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Patrick Meier: Does the Humanitarian Industry Have a Future in The Digital Age?

Blog Wisdom, Civil Society, Collective Intelligence, Commerce, Commercial Intelligence, Cultural Intelligence, Earth Intelligence, Geospatial, Gift Intelligence, Government, info-graphics/data-visualization, InfoOps (IO), International Aid, IO Impotency, Methods & Process, microfinancing, Mobile, Non-Governmental, Peace Intelligence, Threats
Patrick Meier

Does the Humanitarian Industry Have a Future in The Digital Age?

I recently had the distinct honor of being on the opening plenary of the 2012 Skoll World Forum in Oxford. The panel, “Innovation in Times of Flux: Opportunities on the Heels of Crisis” was moderated by Judith Rodin, CEO of the Rockefeller Foundation. I've spent the past six years creating linkages between the humanitarian space and technology community, so the conversations we began during the panel prompted me to think more deeply about innovation in the humanitarian space. Clearly, humanitarian crises have catalyzed a number of important innovations in recent years. At the same time, however, these crises extend the cracks that ultimately reveal the inadequacies of existing humanita-rian organizations, particularly those resistant to change; and “any organization that is not changing is a battle-field monument” (While 1992).

These cracks, or gaps, are increasingly filled by disaster-affected communities themselves thanks in part to the rapid commercialization of communication technology. Question is: will the multi-billion dollar humanitarian industry change rapidly enough to avoid being left in the dustbin of history?

Crises often reveal that “existing routines are inadequate or even counter-productive [since] response will necessarily operate beyond the boundary of planned and resourced capabilities” (Leonard and Howitt 2007). More formally, “the ‘symmetry-breaking' effects of disasters undermine linearly designed and centralized administrative activities” (Corbacioglu 2006). This may explain why “increasing attention is now paid to the capacity of disaster-affected communities to ‘bounce back' or to recover with little or no external assistance following a disaster” (Manyena 2006).

Continue reading “Patrick Meier: Does the Humanitarian Industry Have a Future in The Digital Age?”

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John Steiner: Young Americans Sue US Government Over Environment

03 Environmental Degradation, Corruption, Government
John Steiner

Subject: S.O.S. from the youngest generation

³Industry has a legally protected cognizable interest to freely emit CO2.²  Fossil Fuel Industry Intervenors in the Kids vs Global Warming lawsuit against the US Government to protect the atmosphere as a public trust, April
2, 2012

This is what one of the attorneys for the National Association for Manufacturers said at the hearing this week when they were allowed to join the US Government in defending their so-called ³right² to continue emitting as much CO2 as they please.  Alec Loorz and the other youth plaintiffs, are challenging that right with their own right, one they share with their entire generation, to simply survive on this planet.

http://www.imattermarch.org/#!lawsuit

The judge and all attorneys agreed on one thing:  this is a case of national significance.  We are facing a historic moment.  This lawsuit is a critical and unprecedented opportunity to break the impasse in Congress and force federal emission reduction plans.

Continue reading “John Steiner: Young Americans Sue US Government Over Environment”

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David Isenberg: Revolution at State? Or Lipstick on the Pig?

Advanced Cyber/IO, Analysis, Budgets & Funding, Earth Intelligence, Ethics, Future-Oriented, Government, InfoOps (IO), Intelligence (government), International Aid, Key Players, Methods & Process, Peace Intelligence, Policies, Strategy, Technologies, Threats
David Isenberg

Revolution @State: The Spread of Ediplomacy

Executive summary

The US State Department has become the world’s leading user of ediplomacy. Ediplomacy now employs over 150 full-time personnel working in 25 different ediplomacy nodes at Headquarters. More than 900 people use it at US missions abroad.

Ediplomacy is now used across eight different program areas at State: Knowledge Management, Public Diplomacy and Internet Freedom dominate in terms of staffing and resources. However, it is also being used for Information Management, Consular, Disaster Response, harnessing External Resources and Policy Planning.

In some areas ediplomacy is changing the way State does business. In Public Diplomacy, State now operates what is effectively a global media empire, reaching a larger direct audience than the paid circulation of the ten largest US dailies and employing an army of diplomat-journalists to feed its 600-plus platforms. In other areas, like Knowledge Management, ediplomacy is finding solutions to problems that have plagued foreign ministries for centuries.

The slow pace of adaptation to ediplomacy by many foreign ministries suggests there is a degree of uncertainty over what ediplomacy is all about, what it can do and how pervasive its influence is going to be. This report – the result of a four-month research project in Washington DC – should help provide those answers.

2012-04-03 Hanson_Revolution-at-State (PDF 34 pages)

Robert Steele

ROBERT STEELE:  Fergus Hanson of Australia has done a truly superb job of describing the considerable efforts within the Department of State to achieve some semblance of electronic coherence and capacity.  What he misses–and this does not reduce the value of his effort in the slightest–is the complete absence of strategy or substance within State, or legitimacy in the eyes of those being addressed.  If the Department of State were to demand the pre-approved Open Source Agency for the South-Central Campus, and get serious about being the lead agency for public intelligence in the public interest, ediplomacy could become something more than lipstick on the pig.   The money is available.  What is lacking right now is intelligence with integrity in support of global Whole of Government strategy, operations, tactics, and technical advancement (i.e. Open Source Everything).

See Also:

2012 THE OPEN SOURCE EVERYTHING MANIFESTO: Transparency, Truth & Trust

2012 PREPRINT FOR COMMENT: The Craft of Intelligence

Open Source Agency: Executive Access Point

Preparing America's Foreign Policy for the Twenty-first Century

Review (Guest): No More Secrets – Open Source Information and the Reshaping of U.S. Intelligence

Review: No More Secrets – Open Source Information and the Reshaping of U.S. Intelligence

Robert Steele: Citizen in Search of Integrity (Full Text Online for Google Translate)

Robert Steele: Itemization of Information Pathologies

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David Isenberg: US Taxes Funding Substantial Human Trafficking Schemes by DoD Contractors in War Zones

07 Other Atrocities, DoD
David Isenberg

Some Things Are Just Unacceptable

David Isenberg

Huffington Post,

On March 27 the Technology, Informational Policy, Intergovernmental Relations and Procurement Reform Subcommittee of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee held a hearing, “Labor Abuses, Human Trafficking, and Government Contracts: Is the Government Doing Enough to Protect Vulnerable Workers?”

This is a subject of more than passing interest to me because last year I wrote a report, published June 14, and commissioned by the Project on Government Oversight, on the exploitation and abuse of the workers of a KBR subcontractor. I subsequently testified at a Nov. 2, 2011 hearing about that report before this very subcommittee.

That hearing, by the way, left me with a lingering sense of surrealism, even after five months, if only because it was revealed that the Pentagon official who had responsibility for this subject had never been to Iraq and Afghanistan.

And sadly, as was noted back then, there has virtually never been a prosecution on this charge, even though it was a widespread practice in both Iraq and Afghanistan with contractors, or subcontractor. And there have only been a very few debarments or suspensions of contractors even though it was well known as a widespread practice.

Continue reading “David Isenberg: US Taxes Funding Substantial Human Trafficking Schemes by DoD Contractors in War Zones”

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Mini-Me: Empire Flames on the Edges, Loses the Backyard

Counter-Oppression/Counter-Dictatorship Practices, IO Impotency, Key Players, Policies, Threats
Who? Mini-Me?

Huh?

Latin America to be Innovative in Rio+20

Prensa Latina, 2 April 2012

Quito, Apr 2 (Prensa Latina) Latin America is the only region with capacity to propose innovative initiatives at the World Conference on Sustainable Development Río+20 in the context of today's global crisis, said Mario Ruales, advisor for Environmental Affairs.

Ruales told Prensa Latina they are taking to the event the agreements of the Ministerial Meeting in Quito.

He added there has been consensus on basic environmental issues at the heart of the Bolivarian Alliance for the Peoples of Our Americas (ALBA) and from the Community of Latin American and Caribbean Community (CELAC).

Among them he mentioned regional support to Ecuador's initiative to promote a Universal Declaration on the Rights of Nature, matching human rights'.

“The foundations needs to be removed, noted the expert, since Ecuador and the subcontinent agree that the economy is part of a bigger natural system.Exceeding its limits may bring irreversible damage on the planet”, he added.

“We need to warn on this situation and achieve a global pact to revert the process,” notes Ruales, but that demands renewed efforts to further build common platforms to hold successful global negotiations, “but individual initiatives will hardly be enforced.”

Negotiations are complicated, he adds, but they have proven it is possible to advance towards what should become the future of humanity relaying on savvy proposals.

Phi Beta Iota:  A great deal appears to be happening south of the US border, the most obvious attribute of which is the absence of the US — and one supposes — the obliviousness of the US.  Hybrid governance is emergent, and it is routing around the US Government.  Others doing the same thing include the African Union (behind the scenes, while they play Africa Command as a “useful idiot”), the Paris-Berlin-Moscow axis, the rapidly evolving Iran-Turkey-Pakistan axis, and of course the continuing global — and highly nuanced as well as xtremely well-informed — Chinese advances across all domains.  For the many who are unaware of CELAC, it is OAS without the US and Canada.

noble gold