The truth at any cost lowers all other costs — curated by former US spy Robert David Steele.
The Year Hacktivists And The Government Went To War
Gerry Smith
Huffington Post, 20 December 2013
“Taken together, the lesson appears to be that computer hacking for social causes and computer hacking aimed at exposing the secrets of governing elites will not be tolerated,” Ludlow wrote.
Big Data Fans: The Nitty Gritty
Love talking about Big Data? I recommend doing a bit of reading. I found “What I Learned from 2 Years of Data Sciencing” refreshing. Quotes I noted were:
Is there a message about the nuts and bolts of data? Is analytics repeating the sins of the first enterprise search vendors? It is so much easier to sell sizzle than focus on the basics like figuring out what’s important and getting valid data. Let’s just take the easy path seems to be one risk for analytics cheerleaders.
Stephen E Arnold, December 22, 2013
Continue reading “Stephen E. Arnold: Big Data Falls Down…Way Down…”
This is the most amazing story yet to come out of Fukushima. TEPCO discharged highly radioactive water into the ocean around the carrier Ronald Reagan without telling the U.S. Navy while she was working to rescue Japanese citizens. It resulted in the contamination of the ship, its personnel, and its water system. Sailors are now trying to sue TEPCO. Ask yourself: Why is this not a major story in the corporate news? We have endless news coverage about a very wealthy studiedly redneck yahoo racist bigot, but next to nothing on what happened to this ship and these young American sailors and Marines on a humanitarian mission. Do you think the media's priorities are a bit out of whack? Click through to see the video of the sailors describing what happened to them.
Japan Refused USS Ronald Reagan to Dock for Fresh Water and Crew Decontamination During Rescue Mission Too Radioactive
Turner Radio NetworkPhi Beta Iota: The above is an outrage, certainly, but the question Congress should be asking is this: why did the commander of the USS Ronald Reagan, and the ship's NBC detection systems, not see this coming?
More interesting, and positive, developments from the Vatican. Increasingly the Roman Catholic Church and Protestant Fundamentalists are diverging over the issue of science. One becoming more fact based, the other more unmoored from reality.
Vatican Science on Christmas and Creationism
CHRISTOPHER DICKEY – The Daily Beast
Pentagon's top three threats in the ‘deep future'
What sorts of threats will the US military face in the “deep future”?
That was the topic of a panel at the Association of the US Army (AUSA) conference this week, the heavily attended annual trade show that draws top Pentagon officials and defense contractors.
It's a tricky proposition for the Pentagon, since making the wrong predictions means squandering scarce funds in a time of intense budget pressure. The Pentagon was forced to cancel the Future Combat System in 2009, for example, when the military tried to predict where the future was headed “more than a few years out,” said Gen. Robert Cone, head of the US training and doctrine command. As a result, he told the panel, “We're a little gun-shy.”
Still, in a standing-room-only session, the discussion endeavored to come up with the most likely risks to the stability of the world – and most likely to challenge the US military – in 2030 and beyond. Here are their top three picks.
1. The growth of cities – and of slums
2. A ‘significant and lengthy' period of Sunni-Shiite violence in the Middle East
3. The revolution in personal communications, combined with cheap drones and robotics
Continue reading “Berto Jongman: Pentagon's Top Three Threats”
Big Idea for 2014: Open Data (the Legacy of Aaron Swartz)
by Big Think Editors, December 21,
On this blog we are looking at the ideas that had the greatest impact in 2013 and testing them out to see what their impact will be in 2014 and beyond. A good place to start is this post by Neurobonkers, a tribute to the late Aaron Swartz, from January, 2013.
Neurobonkers wrote:
This is the first obituary I have ever written, as this is the first death of a public figure who I have never known, that has profoundly saddened me as the death of Aaron Swartz has done. With Swartz' talent, he could have made huge amounts of money for himself. Instead he selflessly spent his time campaigning for freedom of information and risked everything on his mission to liberate data.
The ideas that Swartz fought for were wide-ranging, but they all fall under the proud banner that information wants to be free. What landed Swartz in trouble with the authorities was his belief that the public should have access to federal court documents as well as access to scholarly research that was being put behind paywalls. Read Neurobonker's original post for a full examination of this idea here.
Continue reading “Berto Jongman: Big Idea for 2014: Open Data (the Legacy of Aaron Swartz)”
Looking At a Bigger Picture: Criminals and Rogue Organizations Within
Rob Kall
OpEdNews, 22 December 2013
We have big problems that are currently out of control and taking our nation careening towards a future that is dangerously out of control. We have, deeply ensconced within our power infrastructures, institutions, organizations and job categories where there are gross violations of the law, of the constitution, of the rights of citizens. These organizations and the people who operate freely as perpetrators of crimes and abuses of the constitution are protected by the power hierarchy that is supposed to supervise them and hold them accountable.
Let's take a look at some of the worse offenders. There's no new news here. But my hope is to frame this is a bigger problem that needs to be addressed by new responses– responses which I'll discuss shortly.
My goal in this article is to start a conversation that needs to be raised to a much higher level. So here are a few examples of the abusing entities.
Continue reading “Rob Kall: Looking At a Bigger Picture: Criminals and Rogue Organizations Within”
Truman's True Warning on the CIA
Ray McGovern
OpEdNews, 22 December 2013
Fifty years ago, exactly one month after John Kennedy was killed, the Washington Post published an op-ed titled “Limit CIA Role to Intelligence.” The first sentence of that op-ed on Dec. 22, 1963, read, “I think it has become necessary to take another look at the purpose and operations of our Central Intelligence Agency.”
It sounded like the intro to a bleat from some liberal professor or journalist. Not so. The writer was former President Harry S. Truman, who spearheaded the establishment of the CIA 66 years ago, right after World War II, to better coordinate U.S. intelligence gathering. But the spy agency had lurched off in what Truman thought were troubling directions.
Sadly, those concerns that Truman expressed in that op-ed — that he had inadvertently helped create a Frankenstein monster — are as valid today as they were 50 years ago, if not more so.
Truman began his article by underscoring “the original reason why I thought it necessary to organize this Agency … and what I expected it to do.” It would be “charged with the collection of all in telligence reports from every available source, and to have those reports reach me as President … without Department ‘ treatment' or interpretations.”
Truman then moved quickly to one of the main things bothering him. He wrote “the most important thing was to guard against the chance of intelligence being used to influence or to lead the President into unwise decisions.”
Continue reading “Ray McGovern: Truman's True Warning on the CIA”
