Graphic: Al Qaeda’s Ups and Downs
Earth OrientationGraphic: Half the Bodies in White Circle
Earth Orientation
Graphic: Geopolitical Anomalies
Earth Orientation
Patrick Meier: Can Official Disaster Response Apps Compete with Twitter?
Crowd-Sourcing, P2P / Panarchy, Resilience
Can Official Disaster Response Apps Compete withĀ Twitter?
There are over half-a-billion Twitter users, with an average of 135,000 new users signing up on a daily basis (1). Can emergency management and disaster response organizations win over some Twitter users by convincing them to use their apps in addition to Twitter? For example, will FEMAāsĀ smartphone appĀ gain as much āmarket shareā? The appās new crowdsourcing feature, āDisaster Reporter,ā allows users to submit geo-tagged disaster-related images, which are then added to a public crisis map. So the question is, will more images be captured via FEMAās app or from Twitter users posting Instagram pictures?
This question is perhaps poorly stated. While FEMA may not get millions of users to share disaster-related pictures via their app, it is absolutely critical for disaster response organizations to explicitly solicit crisis information from the crowd. See my blog post āSocial Media for Emergency Management: Question of Supply and Demandā for more information on the importance demand-driven crowdsourcing. The advantage of soliciting crisis information from a smartphone app is that the sourced information is structured and thus easily machine readable. For example, the pictures taken with FEMAās app are automatically geo-tagged, which means they can be automatically mapped if need be.
While many, many more picture may be posted on Twitter, these may be more difficult to map. The vast majority of tweets are not geo-tagged, which means more sophisticated computational solutions are necessary. Instagram pictures are geo-tagged, but this information is not publicly available. So smartphone apps are a good way to overcome these challenges. But we shouldnāt overlook the value of pictures shared on Twitter. Many can be geo-tagged, as demonstrated by the Digital Humanitarian Networkās efforts in response to Typhoon Pablo. More-over, about 40% of pictures shared on Twitter in the immediate aftermath of the Oklahoma Tornado had geographic data. In other words, while the FEMA app may have 10,000 users who submit a picture during a disaster, Twitter may have 100,000 users posting pictures. And while only 40% of the latter pictures may be geo-tagged, this would still mean 40,000 pictures compared to FEMAās 10,000. Recall that over half-a-million Instagram pictures were posted during Hurricane Sandy alone.
F. William Engdahl: The Stark Reality Behind Obamaās Russian āStatesmanshipā
02 Diplomacy, 04 Inter-State Conflict, 05 Civil War, 05 Iran, 06 Genocide, 06 Russia, 07 Other Atrocities, 08 Proliferation, 08 Wild Cards, 09 Terrorism, 10 Transnational Crime, 11 Society, Corruption, Government, Idiocy, Ineptitude, IO Deeds of War, IO Impotency, Officers Call
The Stark Reality Behind Obamaās Russian āStatesmanshipā
F. William Engdahl is strategic risk consultant, author and lecturer. He is author of the best-selling book on oil and geopolitics, A Century of War: Anglo-American Oil Politics and the New World Order. It has been published as well in French, German, Chinese, Russian, Czech, Korean, Turkish, Croatian, Slovenian and Arabic. In 2010 he published Gods of Money: Wall Street and the Death of the American Century, and in 2011,Ā Full Spectrum Dominance: Totalitarian Democracy in the New World Order, completing his trilogy on the power of oil, food and money control.
With a diplomatic attitude more reminiscent of a spoiled brat grabbing his toys and leaving the room, US President Obama has resorted to diplomatic snubs and childish criticisms of Russian behavior as if the Russian leaders were small children.
In a press conference Obama described the Russian President as having a āslouchā¦looking like that bored schoolboy in the back of the classroom.ā Yet behind the childish form of the latest White House refusal to meet President Putin before the G-20 St. Petersburg Summit is a grim reality:
Washington is rapidly losing its way to impose its will in the world on multiple fronts and the Putin snub is an impotent reflection of that loss of power. The real issues in US-Russian relations go far deeper.
Stephen E. Arnold: Heat in Text Radar – See Semaphore Content Intelligence Solution by Smartlogic
Advanced Cyber/IO
The Heat in Text Radar: August 2 to August 8
Posted: 12 Aug 2013 01:42 PM PDT
The Text Radar content intelligence and big data blog covered a multitude of issues surrounding the impact that big data is having on the way that more and more industries process and gain insights from their data.
The article, āBig Data Aiding in Healthcare with Timelier Predictions and the Promise of Life Saving Treatmentsā explains how genetic data and non invasive testing can determine the physical ailments someone is likely to have in their lifetime and allows for pre-emptive treatment opportunities.
The article states:
David Swanson: Obama’s Campaign to Glorify the War on Vietnam
Corruption, Government, IO Deeds of War
Obama's Campaign to Glorify the War on Vietnam
Wars exist because lies are told about past wars.
When President Obama escalated the war on Afghanistan, he revived virtually every known lie about the war on Iraq, from the initial WMD BS to the “surge.”Ā While Americans remain unfathomably ignorant about the destruction of Iraq, a majority says the war shouldn't have been fought.Ā A majority says the same about the war on Afghanistan.Ā This is, pretty wonderfully, impeding efforts toward a U.S. war on Syria or Iran.
The new wars were supposed to cure the Vietnam Syndrome — that public reluctance to support mass murder for no good reason.Ā The Pentagon is now turning to the source of the disease.Ā The war in most need of beautification for Americans, the military has decided, is the war the Vietnamese call the American War.
Most people in the United States have no idea that this was, like all other recent U.S. wars, a one-sided slaughter — in this case, of 3.8 million Vietnamese men, women, and children.Ā But most Americans know the war was awful, even on the side of the aggressor.Ā The Vietnam Syndrome (popular opposition to wars) still frightens war makers.
Obama is usually opposed to any “looking backwards,” as doing so might involve prosecuting criminals for their crimes.Ā But, making a big exception, he is dumping 65 million of our dollars into prettying up the war on Vietnam.
Please read the following statement, put together by some U.S. veterans of that war, and sign onto it here.
An Open letter to the American People about a
Project to Accurately Commemorate the American War in Viet Nam
We are coming up on the 50th anniversary of key moments in the American war in Viet Nam.Ā As peace and justice activists, we believe it is crucial that the realities of the war be faced squarely.Ā President Obama has announced his plan for a 13-year-long commemoration funded by Congress at $65 million, featuring a full panoply of Orwellian forgetfulness and faux-patriotism.Ā On May 25, 2012, President Obama proclaimed: āAs we observe the 50th anniversary of the Vietnam War, we reflect with solemn reverence upon the valor of a generation that served with honor. We pay tribute to the more than 3 million servicemen and women who left their families to serve bravely, a world away from everything they knew and everyone they loved … fighting heroically to protect the ideals we hold dear as Americans. Through more than a decade of combat, over air, land, and sea, these proud Americans upheld the highest traditions of our Armed Forces.ā.Ā The purpose of the official proclamation — rather than honestly looking backward so as to glean and educate about important lessons — will be to promote an ex post facto justification of the war, lay lingering doubts to rest, and provide a stamp of approval without attending to or contending with the horrors of the war that many of us opposed.
