Social media has been on our radar for years. However, in the last three months, a number of clients and people struggling with social media “challenges” have enlisted our help. Our engagements have ranged from analyses of the vulnerabilities of the screening methods in use at Google Plus, LinkedIn, and Quora to message automation methods permitted at Facebook and Twitter. We have worked on a number of “interesting” social media situations. You can find a basic summary of our social media consulting services for professional and commercial organizations on our social subsite.
The problems range from government centric to a single individual disseminating misleading information about an established firm.
You can read more about our social media services at this subsite link. We have set up a separate contact point for our social media services. Write us at arnoldit@yandex.com.
Residents living in the shadow of fracking rigs say they've suffered from headaches, nosebleeds and other health effects since drilling began in their communities. Meanwhile, state agencies refuse to release the results of air and water pollution tests.
Thirty years ago, Jenny and Tom Lisak moved into a historic farmhouse in Pennsylvania's rural Jefferson County. The couple raised three children there and established a certified organic farm they named LadyBug Farm.
“When living in the country, your time is marked by nature and each season comes with its own smells, sounds and colors,” Jenny Lisak recently told environmental researchers. “But those colors have faded and our wellbeing, livelihood and dreams are now threatened.”
The trouble started when the oil and gas boom hit Jefferson County and rolled into the Lisak's neighborhood. First came the trucks carrying equipment and supplies in a stream of constant traffic; then oil and gas wells were drilled near LadyBug farm.
Revelations of Korean rapper Psy's anti-American past are emblematic of a global resentment caused by US militarism.
Al Jazeera, 11 December 2012
The incongruity of it seemed to be nothing short of a betrayal. After lightheartedly dancing his way into the hearts of Americans and gaining entrance to the inner sanctum of their cherished cult of celebrity, the Korean rapper, Psy, whose song “Gangam Style” became the most watched video in the history of YouTube and made him a pop culture sensation, has been revealed to have a politically active past which places him directly at odds with the American mainstream worldview and which violently decries its most basic articles of faith.
The man whom they enjoyed as an unthreatening, comically light-hearted foreigner dancing for their enjoyment was revealed to have only years earlier been a vociferous public critic of American policies and the country's role in the world.
In a 2004 performance, the rapper famous for his “invisible horse dance” denounced the United States in a song called “Hey American”:
“Kill those f—ing Yankees who have been torturing Iraqi captives
Kill those f—ing Yankees who ordered them to torture
Kill their daughters, mothers, daughters-in-law and fathers
Kill them all slowly and painfully”
For an American public conditioned to the type of unquestionable worship of the military embodied in the phrase “Support the Troops”, Psy's words represent nothing less than sacrilege. This song however was not his only offence.
In a previous performance, he had come on stage to protest the presence of 37,000 US troops in South Korea and smashed a miniature American tank in protest over the killing of two South Korean schoolgirls by American forces stationed in the country.
As it turned out, the Asian pop-star whom Americans had enthusiastically embraced, arguably the first entertainer to bridge the continental divide so successfully, brought with him not just a culturally unique style of song and dance, but also a worldview which is threateningly alien to most Americans.
If even an innocuous pop singer from a country perceived as benign could espouse views the typical American would attribute to menacing terrorists such as al-Qaeda, it begs serious questions about the pervasiveness of global anti-Americanism as well as to what informs it.
Phi Beta Iota: The ignorance of most Americans — including many in the US Government that have never left the USA, interacted with “real” foreigners, or studied broadly — is quite frightening to any intelligence professional. It is not possible to plan, program, budget, and execute (PPBS/E) with any degree of effectiveness if one is completely unwitting of the legitimate grievances recognized by most people with any degree of engagement — it is also foolish to contemplate for one instant a US “human intelligence” professional going unnoticed anywhere in the world, unless one is acutely conscious of reality.,
Citation: Robert David Steele, “Graphic: Intelligence Requirements, Collection, Evaluation, and Capabilities Building” Phi Beta Iota the Public Intelligence Blog, 11 December 2012
Regulators Under Fire for Keeping Fracking Pollution Test Results Under Wraps
