Evidence has recently surfaced in a 2009 U.S. embassy Berlin cable to the U.S. State and Defense Departments that German authorities hesitated to send hemorrhagic fever cultures to the suspected biological warfare laboratory at the U.S. Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases (USAMRIID) in Fort Detrick, Maryland because the Germans feared the Army might «weaponize» the cultures.
The cable, classified as «Sensitive», is dated December 15, 2009 and states:
Insights of Intelligence Insiders on (Non-) Sharing Intelligence
Musa Tuzuner, Ph.D
Center for Foreign Policy and Peace Research, Ankara, Turkey
This study surveys the Turkish intelligence community's (non-) sharing intelligence behavior. The factors affecting failures to share intelligence and now to increase intelligence sharing practices are examined based on the views of Turkish intelligence insiders. These insiders' views reveal that the complexity of bureaucratic structures, lack of trust, compartmentalization, power, egoism, fear, information groupings, lack of reciprocity and lack of feedback are the causes for non-sharing of intelligence. Policy solutions for shifting from non-sharing toward sharing behaviors is discussed in a new framework including respective government willingness, enhancing capacity of intelligence collection, building intelligence aquariums, creating rules for establishing new intelligence sharing, opening up communications channels, training, and support for sharing culture. This framework argues that policy change should start first at the agency level, then at the community level and finally at the international level.
5.0 out of 5 starsPatriotic Cry from the Heart — Should NOT Be Ignored!, October 24, 2014
It breaks my heart to see reasonable credible cries from the heart on secession put forward, and to then see critics commenting on this material without thinking — in some cases obviously without reading the book at all, just reacting in a Pavlovian (unthinking instinct) manner to the title. This is a five-star book. Yes, it has many weak-points but at root this is a patriotic book that is highlighting the criminal insanity of the totally corrupt federal government (all three branches), and the wanton destruction of the USA — of the middle class, of the blue collar master class, of the rising youth and declining old guys like myself, and of the veterans where suicide now kills more serving military in the field than combat action, and 22 veterans a day commit suicide at home in the USA.
I used to be a Reagan Republican. I broke with the Grand Old Party (GOP) when I realized it had sold out all of us, without exception, in favor of the Koch Brothers and their likes — and when I realized that because of this treason against the Republic, our media, our schools, our labor unions, are local city councils, our legislatures, were all dumbed down and drugged up. So I do NOT agree with the author on many of his own blind beliefs, but I respect the argument he is making and I would say that the question of secession — which I offset with my own emphasis on the need for Electoral Reform restoring the integrity of the US Government to include respect for the US Constitution, are the essential conversation we all need to have in the next two years.
Experts from around the world gathered in Seattle this week at the Water for Food Global Conference to discuss ways to harness this data revolution in agriculture. Hosted by the Robert B. Daugherty Water for Food Institute at the University of Nebraska in association with the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, the conference focused on mobilizing Big Data to improve global water and food security. With that in mind, here are eight ways Big Data is helping to create a more water- and food-secure world.
There are going to be many unanticipated consequences arising from climate change, here is one that is just beginning to surface. Our failure to take what is happening to our planet seriously is going to come at great cost to human civilization. And this may be part of the reason the police have been militarized. Strategic Planners reach into the future as far as they can. And with 55 studies known, and an unknown number in the secret literature, the climate change violence linkage is becoming accepted wisdom. Militarizing the police is the obvious move, particularly in a country filled with guns, militias, and roaring boys.
Millions of people use research everyday. From students, medical professionals, to curious hobbyists, we all benefit from being able to access, read, and cite reliable, tested information. But getting the research we need can be hard and costly when it's locked up behind expensive paywalls. Two university students, David Carroll and Joseph McArthur, were finally fed up with being denied access to online journals and articles that were necessary to continue their studies—so they decided to take matters into their own hands. The result was Open Access Button, a browser-based tool that records users’ collisions with paywalls and aids them in finding freely accessible copies of those research articles. The previous version had over 5,000 users and mapped nearly 10,000 encounters with paywalled research.
The new apps are available both for mobile phones and web browsers, and can be downloaded at openaccessbutton.org.
The data expose a dangerous malfunction in capitalism's engine room. Banks, mutual funds and investment firms used to ensure that citizens' savings were transformed into technical advances, growth and new jobs. Today they organize the redistribution of social wealth from the bottom to the top.
