Patrick Meier: Crowdsourcing Syrian Crisis via Twitter API
Crowd-Sourcing, Innovation, Knowledge
Crowdsourcing Crisis Information from Syria: Twitter API vs Firehose
Over 400 million tweets are posted every day. But accessing 100% of these tweets (say for disaster response purposes) requires access to Twitter’s “Firehose”. The latter, however, can be prohibitively expensive and also requires serious infrastructure to manage. This explains why many (all?) of us in the Crisis Computing & Humanitarian Technology space use Twitter’s “Streaming API” instead. But how representative are tweets sampled through the API vis-a-vis overall activity on Twitter? This is important question is posed and answered in this new study, which used Syria as a case study.
The analysis focused on “Tweets collected in the region around Syria during the period from December 14, 2011 to January 10, 2012.” The first dataset was collected using Firehose access while the second was sampled from the API. The tag clouds above (click to enlarge) displays the most frequent top terms found in each dataset. The hashtags and geoboxes used for the data collection are listed in the table below.
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In terms of social network analysis, the the authors were able to show that “50% to 60% of the top 100 key-players [can be identified] when creating the networks based on one day of Streaming API data.” Aggregating more days’ worth of data “can increase the accuracy substantially. For network level measures, first in-depth analysis revealed interesting correlation between network centralization indexes and the proportion of data covered by the Streaming API.”
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4th Media: Syria, Damascus, Decline of Europe and End of Christianty in the Middle East
Cultural Intelligence
The Syrian Crisis in Light of the Decline of Europe
Dmitry MININ | Strategic Culture Foundation
What does the legalization of single-sex «marriages» in France, which even such desperate acts as Dominique Venner’s suicide in the Cathedral of Notre Dame de Paris have been unable to stop, have in common with the civil war in Syria? The common factor is that in both cases we can see signs of the self-destruction complex which is devouring Europe.
The «Decline of Europe», predicted over 100 years ago by Oswald Spengler, has reached the depths of denying not only its own cultural and historical roots, but the reproduction of life itself… The West, as if possessed by a Freudian «death drive», is trying in some kind of frantic blindness to destroy ancient Christian, and thus European, heritage in Syria. And in exactly the same way it is destroying itself little by little through its attitude toward the institution of the family and toward faith.
It’s some kind of theater of the absurd and a mockery of common sense when authoritarian regimes such as Saudi Arabia and Qatar, where there is not a fraction of the freedoms and religious tolerance which have long been a hallmark of Syrian society, become Europe’s allies in the fight «for democracy» in Syria. According to the Christian charity «Open Doors», in Qatar, for example, converts to Christianity turn into outcasts and are often victims of violence. Christian migrant workers live in «labor communes», where they are not allowed to gather for worship services, and, as in the times of the first Christians, they pray in secret. In Saudi Arabia any religion besides Islam is prohibited altogether, and becoming a Christian is punishable by death.
Many Muslim citizens of European countries are fighting in the war in Syria on the side of the radical Islamists. It’s not difficult to imagine what they will bring back with them to Europe. According to expert figures, over 100 such «volunteers» from England are fighting in Syria, the same number from the Netherlands, over 80 from France, and dozens from Germany, a total of about 600 people, or 10% of the total number of foreigners in the ranks of the rebels. (1) London and Paris are insisting on a resolution to supply weapons to the Syrian opposition. To whom? To the same people who hack British soldiers to death on the streets of their own capital? Is that not a self-destruction complex?
Civilization in Syria was born in the 4th millennium B.C. Damascus is the most ancient of currently existing world capitals. Syria holds an important place in the history of Christianity. It was on the road to Damascus that the Apostle Paul converted to the Christian faith. It was in Syrian Antioch that the disciples of Christ were first called Christians.
Jon Rappoport: The Rebel Against the Controlled World
Cultural Intelligence
The Rebel Against the Controlled World
The campaign and attack against the individual takes many forms.
In 2012, I was contacted by a disillusioned psychiatrist who had “left the field.” He told me he was interested in discussing his experiences.
Here is a key remark he made in our conversation:
“Is there a normal state of mind? The answer is no. There is the ability to deal with the reality of the world, which is a very important skill. But state of mind is another matter entirely. You could have a million people who can deal with the world, and they’re all operating in different states of mind. There is no ‘normal’. ‘Normal’ is a modern myth that has no benefits—except to the people who invented it and control it. If you can control ‘normal’ and disseminate it broadly, slip it into consciousness, you have power. It’s like one of those steamrollers. You flatten people.”
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Theophillis Goodyear: No Doomsday Gap – Facts Are Frauds, Because Truth is Wholeness
Cultural Intelligence
There is No Longer a Doomsday Gap: Facts Are Frauds, Because Truth is Wholeness
The words facts, truth, and reality are the three most abused words in human history, because facts can be worse than useless when taken out of context. They can be used to intentionally distort reality. If we consider reality to be everything that exists, that includes all possible contexts as well. Gandhi understood this when he tried to point out to the British rulers of India that it was unfair to deprive Indians of water because they won't work for you free so that you can finance a private hunting expedition. His point was that although from the context of the landlord it made good business sense, from the context of his tenants it is unreasonable.
These days people are more enamored with facts than ever. Of course facts require analysis, but even the best analysis often conceals a hidden agenda that even the analyst might be unaware of. Only analysis that comes as close as possible to including all contexts can be considered to have any relation to reality. And since that's seldom completely possible, all analysis involves some degree of distortion of reality, even if it's only through overlooking various aspects of reality.
David Swanson: “Dirty Wars” An Anti-War Blockbuster
Cultural Intelligence, IO Deeds of War, Peace Intelligence
There's no end to the pro-war movies we're subjected to: countless celebrations of bombs, guns, and torture. They come in the form of cartoons, science-fiction, historical fiction, dramas, and reenactments pre-censored by the CIA. Movies show us the excitement without the suffering. War in our theaters resembles almost anything else more than it resembles war.
Journalists appear in our movies too, usually as comic figures, talking-head air-heads, numskulls, and sycophants. In this case, the depiction is much more accurate, at least of much of what passes for journalism.
But, starting in June, a remarkable anti-war / pro-journalism film will be showing — even more remarkably — in big mainstream movie theaters. Dirty Wars (I've read the bookand seen the movie and highly recommend both) may be one of the best educational outreach opportunities the peace movement has had in a long time. The film, starring Jeremy Scahill, is about secretive aspects of U.S. wars: imprisonment, torture, night raids, drone kills.
Dirty Wars won the Cinematography Award for U.S. Documentary at the Sundance Film Festival 2013 and, recently, the Grand Jury Prize at the Boston Independent Film Festival. Variety calls it “jaw-dropping … [with] the power to pry open government lockboxes.” The Sundance jury said it is “one of the most stunning looking documentaries [we've] ever seen.” I agree.
Typically, information that does not support our government's war agenda appears only on the printed page, or perhaps in a power-point presented to the usual heroic crowd of aging white activists gathered outside the range of corporate radar. But stroll through an airport and you'll see hardcopies of Dirty Wars displayed at the front of the bookstores. Check out the movie listings in June and July, and you're likely to see Dirty Wars listed right alongside the latest super-hero, murderfest, sequel of a sequel of some predictable Hollywood hackery.
I wrote a review of the book some time back, after which I picked up a job helping to promote the film. But I'm promoting the film because it's a great film, which is different from calling it a great film because I'm paid to promote it. And my interest remains less in selling the film tickets than in recruiting those who see the film into an active movement to change the reality on which the film reports.
This is not Zero Dark Thirty. You can't walk into Dirty Wars supporting drone strikes, night raids, and cluster bombs and walk out with your beliefs reinforced. Most viewers of Dirty Wars will leave the theater believing that U.S. wars make the United States less safe. In that moment, when people who are usually otherwise engaged have come to realize that the Department of So-Called Defense endangers us (on top of impoverishing us) is when we should sign those people up to take part in activities the following week and month and year.
The film opens by contrasting embedded war journalism — the regurgitation of spoon-fed propaganda — with what the viewer is about to see. And what we see is investigative journalism. The film begins by providing us with an understanding of night raids, including from the point of view of family members who have survived them. We see the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff tell Scahill that night raids that kills civilians should not be investigated. And then we see Scahill investigate them, his search leading him to secretive branches of the U.S. military involved in a variety of dirty tactics in various countries.
The film does have a failing. It doesn't tell people anything they can do about the horrors they're exposed to. But, of course, activism is possible and far more effective than any journalism — good or bad — will tell you.
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Bill Lind: 4th Generation Warfare is Alive and Well — And Washington is Still Deaf, Dumb, and Blined
02 Diplomacy, 10 Security, 11 Society, Cultural Intelligence, Government, Idiocy, Ineptitude, IO Deeds of War, Officers Call
William S. Lind
25 May 2013
So “the world simply didn’t develop along the lines it (4GW) proposed”? How do you say that in Syriac?
The basic error in Chet Richards’ piece of April 19, “Is 4GW dead?” is confusing the external and internal worlds. Internally, in the U.S. military and the larger defense and foreign policy establishment, 4GW is dead, as is maneuver warfare and increasingly any connection to the external world. The foreign policy types can only perceive a world of states, in which their job is to promote the Wilsonian nee Jacobin, follies of “democracy” and “universal human rights.” They are in fact, 4GW’s allies, in that their demand for “democracy” undermines states, opening the door for more 4GW.
In most of the world, democracy is not an option. The only real options are tyranny or anarchy, and when you work against tyranny, you are working for anarchy. The ghost of bin Laden sends his heartfelt thanks.
Third Generation doctrine has been abandoned, de facto, if not de jure, by the one service that embraced it, the U.S. Marine Corps. The others never gave it a glance. The U.S. military remains and will remain second generation until it disappears from sheer irrelevance coupled with high cost. That is coming much sooner than any of them think.
In the external world, meanwhile, fourth generation war is triumphing on almost all fronts. Somalia appears at the moment to be a setback. But elsewhere, the forces of stateless disorder (and there are many, not just AQ) have much to celebrate. The bottom line that defines victory or defeat for both states and non-states forces is one question: Is there a real state? A quick tour d’horizon shows spreading state failure. Libya is now effectively stateless, thanks to the “democracy” crowd in Europe and Washington. Fourth generation war is spreading from Libya into west Africa, where states are already largely fictions, Syria is now stateless. The Iraq created by the American invasion was always a Potemkin state, and 4GW there is growing fast, in part fueled from Syria. Fourth generation war is again kicking NATO’s and the U.S.’s butt in Afghanistan, and entirely predictable outcome of invading the Graveyard of Empires. Far more dangerously, 4GW elements grow ever stronger in Pakistan, where the state is failing. Even in Egypt, which has been at least a proto-state for 5,000 years, the state is shaky.
In many of these cases, including Egypt and Pakistan, the only element strong enough to hold the state together is the army. But the “democracy” crowd in Washington immediately threatens aid cut-offs, sanctions, etc., if the army acts. Again, the children now running America’s foreign policy are 4GW’s best allies.
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